


Shall We Dance?

by Corliss_Rose



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ballroom Dance AU, Baz and Agatha friendship, M/M, Simon Snow & Agatha Wellbelove Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2019-10-28 08:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17784065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corliss_Rose/pseuds/Corliss_Rose
Summary: Baz is devoted to dancing, fullstop. Despite his father’s adamant protests, he could easily see himself devoting his life to it. The only downside is his dance partner’s obscenely attractive boyfriend.Simon likes to be supportive of Agatha. He goes to all her dance shows and competitions and tries very hard to follow along when she talks about it. There’s just one hard part: he is pretty sure her dance partner hates him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This fic is my contribution to this year’s Carry On Big Bang. @peradoodle made some fabulous art for the story, so be on the lookout for that on Tumblr. Anyways, hope you enjoy!

Simon

It’s nine pm by the time I get to the public ballroom. Agatha told me “nine ish,” and I know I probably could have shown up at nine thirty and she wouldn’t be ready. Sometimes it’s easy to believe that Agatha values my driver’s license over my friendship. I did offer, though. 

I can see the lights illuminating the summer night from the ballroom at the top of the building, but I’m hesitant to go up. I know I’ll have to at some point (she never has her mobile on her during these things.) I’m definitely not dressed to roll into a social dance, being that I’m in joggers and a t-shirt. And I’m not really one for the dance scene. I go to all of Agatha’s performances and competitions of course - haven’t missed a single one yet - but the social dances I normally steer clear of. She doesn’t need a support crew for those and, if I’m being honest, it’s all a bit intimidating. 

I also think her dance partner might hate me. 

Baz

I am utterly exhausted. This dance started at six, and Wellbelove and I showed up early on top of that to help set up the chairs and shitty coffee machine. I know I could leave if I wanted, most of the crowd is beginning to head out, but I like to make sure Agatha is getting out safely before I do. A true gentleman, I know. 

I’m taking a breather. For most of the night I’ve been switching back and forth from dancing with Agatha and dancing with the handful of children from the beginners class that tagged along. I scan the dance floor to figure out where my actual dance partner is (she’s not tough to spot in a crowd.) I find her dancing an American Rumba with one of the old blokes from the club. They all get overly excited when there is anyone under forty here. 

She’s next to me a minute later, filling a cup at the water machine.

“Did all the kids leave already?” she asks. I nod.

“They don’t ever stay later than eight thirty or so,” I say back. Her demeanor shifts a bit. 

“Wait what time is it?” I glance at my watch, a device this girl would benefit from investing in. 

“About nine, a little after.”

I don’t know when Wellbelove stopped being a complete annoyance to me. We’ve been dancing together for nearly two years now. I think I might’ve hated her in the beginning, if only a little bit. She was oblivious. It’s rare for anyone to actually hate Agatha, at the time the concept must have been foreign. It had to have been her dancing that won me over (not that I don’t still find her annoying from time to time.) I’ve had a good handful of partnerships in the past but this is the only one that I feel has really worked. When she’s dancing, she’s in it. Whole heartedly. 

“Crap,” she sighs. “My ride is probably here already.” The song transitions into a quickstep. Quickstep is her favorite (God knows why, it’s a bloody lung buster.) She turns to me with a questioning smile. 

“Come on then,” I say. “I can’t imagine one more dance will inconvenience your ride that much.”

Simon

I see Agatha dancing as soon as I enter the room. They’re impossible to miss, really. Everyone else on the floor is doing typical social dancing, more hopping around than anything. Agatha and her partner are doing a full on competition routine. They’re practically glowing. I snap a picture and send it to Penny. She thinks the whole dancing thing is cute. 

The song ends and they leave the floor, her laughing and him smirking. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him actually laugh before. When they see me at the perimeter of the dance floor Agatha’s smile gets wider while her partner’s turns into a scowl.

Baz has always seemed to hate me. At first it seemed a bit more like he was bored with my existence and that was fine. He’s one of those posh types that seems bored with everything. Agatha can be like that sometimes, too. But then it got to the point where it seems like he goes out of his way to shoot disdainful glares at me. “Alright, I’m off,” she says to Baz. “See you tomorrow.”

“Right,” he says. He doesn’t look at me at all this time, like I’m not worthy of his gaze. Typical. 

“I didn’t expect you to come up,” Agatha says as we’re walking to the car. “Especially seeing as you’re practically in pajamas.” I grin. 

“Figured you’d take another hour if I didn’t make an appearance.” She laughs. It sounds like music. 

We fall into a comfortable silence as I drive us back to the house. She and I don’t really “talk” that much. If something needs to be said we’ll say it. But I know we both just enjoy the simplicity of each other’s company. And I’m with her constantly, so it works out well. Then when Penny’s around she fills the space we leave open with her endless chatter. I quite like the dynamic. 

When we get in Agatha beats me to the fridge. It’s a complete myth that dancers don’t eat (even though that normally references ballerinas, the statement still stands.) After competitions or really long practices Agatha can sometimes out eat me. That’s saying something. 

A few years ago, after I got tossed around to every care home and foster house within the district, Agatha’s parents took me in. They’re my legal guardians now. At first I had been against the idea. I didn’t want to be their charity case. But well. Things weren’t great in care homes. I don’t really think about back then. It’s still a bit weird living with the Wellbelove’s. Not in a bad way, just weird. This place is more of a home to me than anywhere else has ever been. 

I guess all that would make Agatha like my sister. I don’t think of her that way, though. She’s not my best friend or my girlfriend either. She’s just Agatha. She’s in my life and I’m in her’s and we’re both content to keep it that way.


	2. Chapter 2

Baz

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m cranky in the morning. Because I’m definitely not. I’m just not a morning person. I don’t really think alleged morning people are actually morning people. They’re just well trained. 

Wellbelove and I train almost every day of the week. Naturally, some of that is going to land in the mornings. Saturdays, to be precise. Eight thirty am. And then you have to take into account the commute. This means I’m getting up at six thirty on a weekend. 

Agatha and our coaches are pretty used to me being sour for the first half. She’s stopped getting touchy about me being rude on these days. It’ll be lovely when she stops getting touchy about me being rude in general, but one can’t have it all. 

It’s Daphne that helps me get back and forth from classes and training sessions. My father has always been a bit weird about all the dancing. He has that hyper masculine mindset that ballroom dancing is a woman’s sport (which is stupid, seeing as it’s all about partnership.) It gets increasingly worse the older I get. I can’t imagine the carnage it’ll be the day I come out. 

The day I come out. As if that’s even a prospect right now. 

Despite my father, Daphne loves everything about the dancing. Her and Mordelia are always at my shows and competitions. She helps me with my hair and loves to fuss over my suits and Agatha’s dresses. They once made signs like the kind you’d see people hold at a football match with mine and Agatha’s names written out in big, bold letters. 

My father doesn’t always show up to the competitions. I think that’s the only thing I’ve ever heard him and Daphne fight about. 

“He needs your support, Malcolm,” she had said. 

“That’s what I’m giving him! I’m paying for the damn classes and admission.”

“Support is more than just money.”

-  
When I get into the studio Agatha’s already there, running through ballet barre warm-ups. She used to be a ballet dancer before she got into ballroom. It shows in her dancing. I quite like it. Makes her look more regal and graceful than most of the other girls. 

Once she sees me she springs at me about needing to work through the samba piece really quickly before our coaches get there. She’s unfazed that I give no facial expression, simply nod and get into hold. 

I’m not feeling right today, and it’s more than wanting to be asleep. I can’t place it. Logically it would have to do with my father seeming particularly disappointed yesterday night, but it’s not that. I’m used to that. I can handle that. 

I think it has to do with seeing Agatha’s boyfriend yesterday. I hate that I think it has to do with seeing Agatha’s boyfriend yesterday. I didn’t even have to interact with him. I just didn’t know I’d be seeing him and thus had no time to brace myself. 

The fact of the matter is Simon Snow’s ridiculously attractive and it’s outrageously horrible. 

Agatha

I’m certain the only time Basil doesn’t look bored is when he’s dancing, when we’re dancing. It’s beautiful, really. He takes on the persona of whatever style we’re doing. He maybe even gets lost in it. Then when we’re done he’s back to being irritable, cool Baz. It would be upsetting if it wasn’t so entrancing. 

I definitely used to have a crush on Baz. Thank God I got over that. It never would have worked out. And I like us better just dance partners. I’m not even sure if I’d really consider us friends. But we’re bonded on a different level. Something more spiritual. 

I’ve never told anyone how I think dance is the closest thing we have to the divine. It sounds kind of silly when you say it out loud. 

Baz

We have a competition next Sunday, and I’m so tremendously off my foot I think I might crack. I’m frustrated. I’m tired. Our coaches can’t tell (or at least they haven’t pointed it out) so I know it’s not showing in my movement. Agatha can tell. She’s much more perceptive than she lets on. 

“Are you alright?” she asks when we’re on a water break.

Here’s the thing about Agatha. She’s impossibly socially awkward, but it’s hidden behind all the glowy beauty and upfront flirtatiousness. I think it’s that she’s scared someone will call her out for being wrong. So while the words come out right and she’s mimicking the right faces, I can tell she doesn’t think they did and she doesn’t think her face is doing the right thing. 

I sigh. “Yeah, just feel off.” I want to leave it at that. I want to say something rough and sarcastic. But I owe her a bit more than that. “Tired. Don’t worry about it,” I say instead, turning back to the floor. 

Simon 

I’m having breakfast with Penelope at a Starbucks when I get Agatha’s text. Penelope and I like to do coupley things, but in our completely platonic way. She jokes a lot about how she’s gone on more dates with me than she has with her boyfriend, Micah. 

I guess this is more of a brunch than a breakfast, seeing as it’s pretty late in the morning. She picked me up, so we’re going on her time schedule. Penny is the kind of night owl that is still determined to make up the sleep she lost researching whatever new obsession she’s found with the hours in the morning. 

Right now she’s rattling on about a book she recently discovered. 

“And you don’t need to read all of it. I just think you’d find it so fascinating.” She bought me a huge bag filled with scones, enough to feed a small army. 

She sighs. “I can’t believe we’re going to graduate soon.” Big gear shift, but I laugh. 

“We’ve still got two years, that’s not that soon.” 

“Of course it is.” Penny tends to switch back and forth between acting like a small child and an adult. “Pretty soon we’re going to be sending in applications.”

“It’s not like you’ve got anything collegey to worry about.” She pulls a face. 

“Did you really just say ‘collegey’?”

My phone buzzes from where it sits on the table. I glance at it. 

Agatha: mind if me and mr edge lord crash your penny date?

I don’t know who “mr edge lord” is. I don’t know if I’m supposed to know who “mr edge lord” is. 

Simon: sure?

I look up at Penelope. “Agatha and someone are gonna meet us here.” She raises an eyebrow. I think she trained herself to be able to do that so that she can have full range of condescending looks if she needs it.

“Someone?”

Baz

I must really be out of it because next thing I know I’m accepting to spend the rest of the day with Wellbelove and her friends. It’s not that we don’t see each other outside of dance, but when we do it’s always just the two of us and the conversation always makes its way back to dance. Maybe it’s the only thing we really know how to coexist around. 

Agatha’s parents don’t like me, this much I know. They even go so far as to drop hints that she should seek out a new partner. In front of me. And it’s not like I did something to personally wrong them. I’m very good at being polite when I need to be (a shocker, I know.) It’s that they have some bad blood with my family. It’s a Romeo and Juliet situation, only Romeo is gay and Juliet has a boyfriend who radiates sunlight. 

Jesus. Get a grip, Baz. 

Agatha has a faded, almost vintage looking Volvo. It’s terribly cliche. It suits her. 

“You have your license?” I ask, raising an eyebrow as we get in the car. 

“Yeah? Did I say otherwise?” 

“You always make such a fuss about getting a ride, I figured you didn’t.” She lets out a bark of laughter. ‘Bark’ isn’t really the right word. Even the moments that should come off sharp and, for lack of a better word, human come out smooth and curvy with this girl. I don’t know if it makes me feel sick or enraptured. 

That’s how it is with me and Wellbelove. I don’t know if I find her nauseating or the best person on this earth. Maybe she is the best person on this earth, and that’s why I find her nauseating. 

“I don’t like driving at night,” she says simply. “And normally Helen or Simon’s fine with driving me.” 

“Right.” I try not to think about the various things her and Snow must have done in this car. Try and fail. I hate having an overactive imagination. 

We drive in silence for a few minutes. Agatha isn’t really a chatty sort, I’ve noticed. It’s hard not to feel like the only reason I’m in this car to begin with is because she thought I looked pitiful today. 

We pull into the parking lot of a Starbucks. I raise an eyebrow again.

“If you make a basic white girl joke, I’m going to slap you.”

-  
I’ve found that when my brain short circuits, I come out more nasty and rude than normal. And my normal is already fairly nasty and rude. That is my justification for why I come of as a horrible person when I talk to guys. 

I should have known that Snow would be wherever Agatha was dragging me to. It takes willpower not to turn around and walk right back out the door. 

Agatha waves at him and a girl with a poof of hair that I think I recognize from seeing her at competitions before turning to me. “Do you want anything? My treat.”

I have a soft spot for candy coffee. The frilly stuff that people call “white-girl-coffee.” I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not proud of it, either. 

“Get me a caramel frappucino,” I say. Agatha doesn’t seem to judge me for it. 

“Gotcha,” she says. “That’s my crew over there. You already sort of know them, yeah?”

I nod and walk over to the table. I feel nervous. I don’t like it. 

Simon

Baz is “mr edge lord.” Of fucking course. 

“He looks like he could be a mobster,” Penny says as we not-so-discreetly watch him and Agatha exchange a few words. 

And then he’s walking over. I want to pull the same type of scowl that he always has plastered to his face, but I also don’t really want to be that rude. I’ve never told anyone, including Penny, that he acts like he hates me. I figured it could cause unnecessary drama for Agatha. If I act like how I want to act, it’ll seem unjustified. 

I don’t know what my face is doing as he’s sitting down at our table with an eyebrow raised. Stupid, smug eyebrow. It’s like he just has to show how stupid and dumb and below him he thinks everyone is. I’m getting worked up over all of this. 

“You must be Basil,” Penny says. For all I can tell, she’s oblivious to me fuming next to her. 

“Correct,” he says. Wow, pretentious much?

“I’m Penelope. We met before at one of your’s and Agatha’s dance things.” Then she turns back to me and continues talking right where she had left off before the other two walked in. Baz looks both intrigued and bored at the same time.

Penny has this thing where after the initial introduction she treats new people as though she doesn’t have time for them. It’s not with malice. Or a false sense of superiority. She just really can’t manage to slow down and pull someone new into an already established conversation. It drives Agatha up the wall. (A lot of things about Penny drive Agatha up the wall.)  
I don’t really think I’ve ever had a full length conversation with Baz. The most I can think of is congratulating him after some dance thing, and those got more and more concise as I caught on to how much he seems to dislike me. The first time I talked to him, just after Agatha and him started dancing together, I think I was pretty nice. Nothing worthy of a bad first impression label. 

I just don’t get it. 

Agatha comes back and I feel relieved. She’s holding two largely sized cups of coffee and whipped cream. It’s beyond comical when she places one in front of Baz. He comes off as more of a black coffee sort of guy, not that I’d know. And apparently I don’t know. 

Penelope keeps jabbering. She’ll come back down to earth soon, once her tangent wraps itself up. I don’t mind. I really like listening to her. There are times when I find it difficult to talk. It’s like I have a maximum word count for each day and sometimes I just. Run out. Penny and Agatha are the only two people that really get that. They’ve seen me through a lot. 

Agatha shoots me a half smile, one that’s more eyes than mouth. She does this when Penny’s talking a lot (so long as she’s not busy being annoyed at Penny talking a lot.) It’s like we have an inside joke. 

“Well, anyways,” Penelope says. She’s back in the same dimension as everyone. “How’s the dancing going?” This turns the attention to Agatha and Baz, who had taken off the lid of his frappucino and is now licking at the whipped cream (and it somehow doesn’t look ridiculous.)

“Fine,” Agatha says. She gets a little closed off when Penny brings up her dancing. Sometimes it makes her seem stuck up, like she doesn’t think people like me or Penny could understand the dancing. Which is true, to some degree. But it’s more that she finds Penny talking about it the way she does patronizing. 

“Just fine?” Penelope pushes. She wants a conversation, and Agatha doesn’t seem like she wants to give it to her. 

“We’re getting ready for a competition,” Baz says. I think he can sense the tension. I think anyone can sense the tension except for Penny. Or maybe she can, but she just can’t help but disregard it. 

“We’re always getting ready for a competition,” Agatha says, more to Baz than the rest of us. 

“Well we’re revamping the latin routines, that’s something.” They’re practically having a conversation all on their own now. 

“Right, because you’re all about latin,” she says. He half smirks, half sneers. Maybe that’s just what smiling is to him. 

“Like you can talk with your quickstep obsession. Trying to maintain your feminine figure with all the cardio?” Agatha laughs. 

“Yeah, but we all know you only like latin so much ‘cause you get off on watching yourself move your hips through the mirror.”

“What is happening?” Penny stage whispers to me. 

“I have no idea.”

Baz

Snow has been glaring at me from the moment I sat down. It strikes me that maybe he thinks I’m trying to steal his girlfriend. That’s rich. 

Wellbelove and I get a little carried off bantering about dance. I dare Snow to get jealous of it. I fucking dare him. 

I turn some of my focus back to the other two at the table. He’s staring at me like he’s trying to figure out what species I am. I have the urge to wink at him. I restrain myself. That would most likely end horribly.

“Do you the you two’ll be famous someday?” Snow says. I think that’s the first thing he’s said out loud in my direction this whole time.

I sneer at him. “Ballroom dancers don’t really get all that famous.”

“I kind of like that though,” Agatha says. “We can get plenty popular in the ballroom world, but there won’t be any crazies trying to sell our secrets to magazines.”

“Fancy you’ve got a lot of secrets magazines would want to buy?” I quip back. 

“You should build an internet following,” Penelope butts in. 

“A what?” I say. 

“You know, like social media for your dancing. Put up videos and pictures of all the cool stuff you do.”

“We have a Facebook, I think,” says Agatha. She’s right. Her mother manages it for us. Shares what events we’ll be at and puts up some of the video footage we get from shows. It’s not very glamorous. 

Penelope wrinkles her nose. “Only old people go on Facebook.”

“Don’t you shun all social media platforms in general?” Simon’s looking at her quizzically. He’s much less talkative than she is, I’ve noticed. 

“Not unless it’s for business.” I see him and Agatha share a look. In all the ‘excitement’ I’d almost forgotten that I’m still an outsider to this happy trio. 

“I’m just saying, I could help you make some really professional looking pages. Get your name out there, you know.”

Agatha rolls her eyes slightly and glances at me. “I don’t think we need that just yet.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapters and got really excited about this story. I’m gonna get this back on track and give this fic a regular posting schedule (so that I don’t forget and put it off like last time heh). There’ll be a new chapter every other day until it’s all up <3

Simon

I’m sprawled out on my bed and Agatha is on the floor doing some yoga stretch. Or maybe it’s a ballet stretch. She’s stretching, that I’m certain of. 

“You look ridiculous,” I say. Her limbs are all contorted in a posture that makes her look like she might be mimicking some kind of animal. 

“It’s the only way I can stretch my shins.”

“You look like a lizard.” She gives me a weird look. 

I’m sketching in a notebook and watching Doctor Who on my computer, re-binging some seasons back from Ten’s era. This laptop is probably one of my favorite things in the world. Agatha’s parents got it for me the year I moved in. It’s thin and slick and has everything installed that I could possibly want or need. I love it. 

For most of my life I didn’t have anything nearly this nice. I made it all the way to freshman year before even getting a phone. It drove Penelope up the wall. “It’s like when you’re not at school you slip into some other plane of existence,” she once exclaimed. 

I’m mad protective of this computer, Agatha thinks it’s hilarious. She’s called me “adorable” on many occasions. Penny normally agrees with her. 

There’s a light rap on the door. “Mail,” rings Helen’s voice from the other side. 

“I’ve got it,” Agatha says, jumping up from where she was on the floor. I never get anything from the post anyway. Who would be sending it? There’s probably just new dance certificates for Agatha. 

She has a book filled with all the official papers and placards she gets that are dance related. Sometimes she gets in this head space where she thinks she isn’t progressing enough, or at all, and we’ll get it out and flip through all the way from the beginning. It helps, I think. 

I turn my attention back to the show. I’m watching Rose have one of her big moments when my phone rings. It’s Penny. 

“Sup,” I say when I answer. 

“Oh my God, Simon I have a brilliant idea for what we need to spend the summer doing.”

Every year, Penny has a new big idea. Once she decided to write a novel. Another time she decided to make a nature blog. She always follows through with it. And she always makes sure to bring me along for the ride. 

I chuckle. “Alright, what have we got this year?”

“Is Agatha in the room with you?” I want her to hear it too.”

“I’ll get her,” I say. Agatha doesn’t always like getting dragged around on mine and Penny’s adventures. But I really think we all function the best as a trio. 

I knock on her door and hear something drop. I open the door slowly. 

“Alright in here?”

“Yeah, fine. You startled me is all.” She crumples up a paper she’s holding and tosses it in the can. 

“Is she there?” Penny asks through the phone. I had put her on speaker mode. 

“Yup,” I say.

“Alright, so.” She clears her throat, for dramatic effect I assume. “We should make a bunch of high quality videos of you and Baz dancing in really cool places.”

At first I think she means me and Baz, but then it clicks that she means Agatha. Because they actually dance together. 

I should put it out there that I can’t dance for shit. Agatha tried to teach me once. It didn’t work. 

She raises her eyebrows and sits down on the edge of her bed. “Explain to me exactly what that might entail.”

“Well, I remembered last night that Premal has a handful of decent cameras and stands for them. They’re not the best in the world, but they're definitely better than the camera phone videos we have of you two.” I glance at Agatha. She looks really concentrated on Penny’s words. She’s really considering it. 

“So I was thinking we could go to some nice locations, maybe parks or beaches, and set up three cameras from different angles. Then you two can dance, and I’ll edit it all together.” There’s a beat of silence. “And we don’t have to put it ion the internet if you don’t want, but this way you guys can have some really nice record of your dancing.”

Agatha looks collected and unfazed, but I can tell she’s excited by the idea.

“I’ll have to ask Baz about it,” she says slowly, her face opening into a smile. 

Penelope

I’ll be honest, I was very prepared for Agatha to shut down the video idea before it even got running. I feel buzzed on the fact that she didn’t. She even seemed excited by it. Imagine that. 

As we’ve gotten older Agatha has strayed farther and farther from the spontaneity that used to stick us together. One might say she’s just trying to be more reasonable, more adult. She would say that. She has said that, it’s something she pulls on me all the time. It’s difficult to handle at times. I really, really miss the younger, pigtailed Agatha who would jump into an idea almost quicker than Simon.

Although that might not be saying much. There was a time when Simon completely caged himself in his shell. Various times. 

Making these videos will also mean there’ll be four of us for a little while. It’ll help to change things up a bit. I tend to feel like there’s a third wheel when it’s me, Simon, and Agatha. I just don’t know who the third wheel is. 

Baz

Saturday was weird. All of it. I don’t really know how I feel about it. 

After we all listened to Agatha’s friend Penelope ramble on for about an hour they decided to part ways. I hadn’t thought this far ahead and didn’t have a way to get back home. I figured that’s not the worst thing in the world, I’d just wait around ’til Daphne can come and get me. 

Agatha turned to me as we all were getting up. “We can give you a ride back to your house if you need,” she said. There’s a possibility she was just being polite and that I should have declined. But it was nearly one and waiting for an unforeseeable amount of time in a Starbucks is not the ideal way for me to spend my afternoon. 

That’s how I found myself in a car with Wellbelove and Snow. 

Simon was the one driving and Agatha was busying herself by flipping through the radio stations. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. With the other third gone these two had significantly more silence between them. 

Snow tapped Agatha’s hand to get her to leave it on the station she had just turned it to. It was such a small thing, but the physicality of it made my stomach drop a bit. These two are so obviously meant to be together, it’s enraging. 

It shouldn’t be enraging. Especially to me. 

Then Snow did something that I wasn’t expecting, that I still don’t know what to make of. He started singing along to the radio. Just barely audible. From where I was sitting in the back I could just see the profile of his face. He looked so in the song. Like the rest of us were no longer there, like he was no longer there. 

He looked beautiful. 

I might have a slight crush on Simon Snow.

-  
“And you don’t have to agree if you don’t want to.” Agatha is explaining to me an idea that her talkative friend had. She looks like she’s trying to seem passive, to convey ‘I don’t really care but if you want to we can.’ But she’s practically vibrating at the thought of filming our dancing in this way. “It might be fun, you know?”

We’re at one of our afternoon practices and we both got here early. This is one of my favorite studios. The walls are a pale lavender and almost every inch is covered in floating shelves overflowing with trophies. It’s not as big or as grand as some places we’ve trained in, but it has this energy about it. 

“Yeah, sure, let’s do it,” I say. Her face actually lights up. She must have been expecting me to be less on board. To need more convincing. 

For now I can ignore that this will mean I’ll have to spend more time with Agatha’s posse. They all have so much do-good energy I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to handle in a day. 

And then there’s everything with Snow. Or, more accurately, everything that isn’t with Snow. 

Simon

We’re driving down a scenic road, Penny, Agatha, and I. Penny’s driving, I’m singing as loud as I can to the radio, and Agatha’s laughing. It’s all very coming-of-age movie. 

Penny decided we should start prep for the videos right away. “We can’t waste valuable time on only thinking about it.” Today we are location hunting. Basically going to various parks and while Penny and Agatha get excited over how nice it’ll look to film there I get to play with dogs. At each place we’ve been to thus far, there has been at least one dog. 

“Oh, this is lovely,” Agatha says once we’re at the next spot. And it really is. It’s mainly open grass with trees lining the edge, but in the center there’s a large patch that’s paved with red bricks. Just next to that there’s a small gazebo surrounded by picnic benches. Pretty nice for a public park. 

They both make a beeline for the gazebo. This looks like the type of place you’d host a wedding at. Once we’re in the gazebo Agatha does a little twirl in the center that I think is supposed to be silly but still comes out as angelic. She’s wearing a pale yellow, flowy sundress and I can’t help but wonder if she picked it out specifically because she knew she’d be spinning all over the place. 

“This is my favorite one yet, I think,” says Penny. 

Agatha turns to her. “Can we do this one first? For the filming?”

“I can’t see why not.”

They’re feeding off of each other’s excitement. It’s nice to watch. Reassuring. It isn’t that the two of them have been on bad terms recently. But it’s felt like in recent Agatha’s had less and less time to enjoy running in parks and driving aimlessly. And then Penny would get frustrated because it’s like Agatha’s left us and moved on to another life. 

I think Penny is secretly terrified about the future. About what comes after graduation. I can’t blame her, I’m also scared. Well maybe not scared. I feel. Uncertain. She doesn’t let it show much, always talking about her big plans for us. How we’re going to get a flat together and fill it with scones and books. That’s her way of keeping everything from falling out of her hands. Making plans. But she won’t be able to keep everything the way it is when it comes down to it. She knows that. 

Baz 

Agatha and I are at my house. It’s become a bit of a routine for me to spend Saturday afternoons with either just her or her and her little group. Daphne caught on and told me we could always come here if we didn’t want to be out. I already knew we could, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted them here. So far only Agatha’s come. 

I could tell she was uncomfortable the first time. Spooked. I get it, my house isn’t necessarily homey. It’s filled with ancient things, family heirlooms and the like. The architecture is quite grand, a touch excessive maybe. I’m accustomed to it. I’ve lived here my whole life. 

Daphne went far out of her way to make sure Agatha feels alright with coming over. I have a hunch it’s because she thinks I fancy Agatha, or vice versa. That’s a laugh. 

We’re in one of the sitting rooms now. Agatha is clicking through videos on her phone. I was reading, but I sort of abandoned it a few minutes ago. I’m knackered. Practice must have been more intense than usual. Or I’m just not used to so much social interaction and it’s got me drained. 

There’s a common misconception that I don’t have friends. I do. But I know all of them through school and football club, and I don’t put in the effort to see any of them outside of that. 

“Have you thought at all about what you might do after graduation?” Agatha asks, seemingly out of nowhere. 

I raise an eyebrow. “I guess. There are some places my parents want me to go. You?”

“Oh, I dunno,” she says with a sigh. “I’m not even really sure what I want to do besides dancing.” She pauses. “Do you think maybe you’d wanna try stay in close by areas of each other?” I give her a quizzical look. “Well, I don’t really want to end our partnership at graduation. It’s going so good and all. I figured maybe I could try for some places nearby where you’re trying for.”

I smirk. “You sure Snow would be okay with you uprooting your life to chase after me?”

“Why wouldn't he be?” She says, furrowing her brow. 

“I don’t know, because he’s your boyfriend maybe?”

She looks taken aback. “Simon isn’t my boyfriend.”

What. 

“He isn’t?” I’m keeping my face neutral and it’s taking a lot of work. I don’t want her to get the wrong idea. Or the right idea.

She looks thoughtful for a moment. “I think we might’ve gotten married when we were six. But that’s probably notwithstanding now,” she says with a laugh. “Did you really thing we were dating this whole time?”

“Yeah. Yeah I did.”

I don’t know what to do with this information.


	4. Chapter 4

Baz

It’s the big day. The big filming day. We’re driving out absurdly far to a public park that these lunatics found some how. Agatha bought everyone iced coffee, so there’s a bit of a buzz in the atmosphere. It would be quite easy to lose myself in the nice feeling if I wasn’t seated next to Snow in the back.

Agatha claims she’ll get car-sick if she sits in the back seat. I think that’s just a bullshit manipulative way to call shotgun, but here we are. Bunce is driving, so obviously that leaves me and Mr. Sunshine. The two ladies are heatedly discussing whether or not romance novels are good. Heated is the only way to describe it. They’re both getting very invested.

But this all has me and Simon without a mediator to bounce off of. Thus an awkward silence.

“Um,” he says, looking at me.

“Um?” I say back. I know what my face is doing right now. It’s a combination of disapproval and challenge. He looks dreadfully uncomfortable.

“So, uh, what dance are you guys doing for the video?” I can tell that he desperately wants me to pick up the conversation and keep it alive. I don’t know which is worse, this or the uncomfortable not-conversation.

“Were you not paying attention when we talked about it earlier?” We had talked about it earlier. And he very easily could have listened then.

He lets out a short, frustrated sigh and closes his eyes. I turn my gaze to the lovely scenery we’re driving through. It’s a struggle for me not to stare at him. All the time.

“We’re doing a tango,” I say quietly. I see him turn to look at me out of my periphery. Probably surprised I gave an answer.

Simon

I’m playing nice for Agatha and Penny’s sake, because they both seem so happy to be doing this, even though they’re currently mock-arguing (Penny is pro-romance novels, Agatha is anti. You’ think it would be the other way around.)

I’m not socially inept. I might come off that way to some, I’ve realized. My issue is that I can’t be the talkative one unless I’m really at ease, but unless it’s with Agatha or Penny I can’t stand stagnant conversation. It’s all a huge contradiction. Thank god we finally get to the park.

I’m fairly good with technology, so Penny assigned me the role of equipment overseer. So while the others get a bit of time to “frolic,” I’m unloading the tripods and cameras. At least we don’t have lighting equipment. We’re not that fancy.

I turn around, arms full of padded bags, and see Baz next to the car, staring off at the park. Just standing there. He can’t have taken even three steps forward. He looks frozen in time.

I clear my throat. That startles him out of his daze, and he sneers at me before sauntering off to join Penelope and Agatha.

Baz

Of course it’s this park. Of fucking course. I should have realized as we were driving here.

The last time I was here it was a week before my mother died.

“The last good day” I’ve heard my aunt Fiona call it. But I can’t think about how good it must have been without thinking about everything else. And I don’t want to think about everything else. I think about everything else enough as it is.

I feel sick and numb at the same time and all I want to do right now is leave. I want to throw a big tantrum and leave.

But I’m not going to do that to Agatha.

I’m far away when Snow passes the equipment to Bunce because she insists the set up needs to be a certain way. I’m far away as I sit down at one of the picnic benches. I’m far away when Snow sits across from me.

“Why do you hate me?” he asks. It zaps me back to earth.

“What?” I respond gruffly.

“You heard what I said,” he says. He sounds frustrated. And aggressive. “Ever since I’ve met you, you’ve acted like you hate me.”

I have no idea what to say to that. Yes, Snow, you’re the bane of my existence. Now could you please leave me alone so I can return to my sad flashback and self pity?

“Look,” he says, trying a different approach I assume. “Whatever I did to wrong you, even though I really don’t think I did anything, I’m sorry. So can you just-“

“Can I just what?”

He lets out a sound of exasperation and slumps his face into his hands. I think I hear him mutter “why is this so difficult.”

He lifts his head from his hands but doesn’t open his eyes. “Just. Truce. Okay? Restart. I’m asking for a restart.”

I wonder why this matters so much to him.

“Fine,” I say. “Whatever. Yeah. Restart.”

His eyes snap open, and he looks so goddamn hopeful and pleased with himself. I don’t think I can formulate anymore words in his direction.

But Agatha calls us over to start filming, so I won’t have to. I won’t have to do anything. I can bury everything down and just. Dance.

Simon

They look beautiful.

Baz

I don’t want to come down from the other dimension that dancing seems to inhibit. But I do. We stick our ending and we stop filming and Agatha squeals happily. She glomps me in a hug and I try to respond to it. She says we must have looked amazing and I try to respond to it. She tells me to help pack up the equipment and I try to respond to it.

I’m on autopilot.

-  
I’m out of the car before anyone can even say anything to me. This day has been too much for me. My senses feel like they're on fire. I’m either going to start screaming or burst into tears if I talk.

I don’t trust myself to try.

But there are footsteps behind me. Of course, because with this bloody lot they need to make sure everyone’s always okay. I can’t handle sympathy. I can’t handle someone making sure I’m alright. I can’t handle Agatha’s hand on my shoulder.

“What?” I spit out, turning around.

“You’re not alright,” she says, point blankly. “And that’s fine. I don’t know why you got like this halfway through the day, but it’s fine. You’re aloud that, you know? What isn’t fine is you being an out-right dick to everyone, then going all stoney on the way here.”

“Shove off, Agatha.” It comes out sounding like a growl.

“People don’t treat friends like this without any justification. You’re being so nasty.”

“Well maybe I didn’t ask to be your friend.” I’m not shouting, but I might as well be. I am consumed in this horrible feeling. “I didn’t ask for your’s or your fucking troop’s friendship. I’ve got better things to spend my time on.”

“Do you really?” She’s genuinely asking. Not to egg me on. Genuinely asking. I feel like I’m boiling.

Agatha must read something on my face. She presses a palm to her forehead. “Look I didn’t mean it like that-“

“Fuck. Off.”

It’s after I slam the front door behind me that I regret everything.

Simon

Agatha gets into the car and I’m about to ask if Baz is okay but then I see she’s crying and I flip the question to ask if she’s okay.

“He is so insufferable sometimes,” she nearly shouts. She drags a wrist across her eyes roughly. I think she might go off on a full rant.

Penny unbuckles her seat belt and turns to face her. She puts a hand on her shoulder. “You need to breathe.”

Penny is good at this. Being stern but calming at the same time. Normally I’m the one on the receiving end of her talk-downs. It’s a good thing, because if I were in the soothing position I know I would say all the wrong things. Ask all the wrong questions.

I’d ask what happened on the porch, and why Baz looked like he was going to throw himself out of the car on the ride here.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy macaroni, I was not expecting this fic to get this much response. Thank y’all so much!

Baz

I arrived at the studio before Agatha. My stomach feels like it’s been turned upside down.

I know, if I tried, I could explain to her exactly what was running through my head. How I was so exhausted and how I can handle bad memories just fine but the good ones are what I don’t know what to do with. How to dodge. I can deal with bad memories because I’m used to bad memories. 

I’m not going to load that all onto someone who might not even want to associate with me anymore.

Oh god, what if Agatha wants to split after this all? That would be uncalled for right? I think she was crying when I slammed the door. 

The studio door opens and there’s Agatha and we both just stand there for a second. Not saying anything.

She’s not going to apologize. I’m not going to apologize. And somehow that makes it okay.

“Do you want to run through our rumba before Miss Possibelf gets here?” she says quietly.

“Yes. Let's do that.”

Simon

“It alright if I invite Baz over?” Penny says, not looking up from her phone.

“How?” I ask, completely taken aback by that statement. She gives me the most condescending look. She’s good at those. 

“Whadya mean ‘how?’ Over text?” 

“That’s fine,” Agatha says, glazing over my confusion.

“Hang on, you and Baz text?” I ask incredulously.

“Great, I’ll send him the address.”

“I think he already has it.”

“Is this just normal now?” They both finally look at me. Agatha shrugs.

“I suppose so,” she says. 

And I guess she’s right. Baz has sort of been integrated into our group. He still acts particularly rude to me, and particularly moderate to the others, so I’m not sure why he still shows up. But I’m beginning to see that that might just be how he treats everyone. Either rude, or moderately kind. Kind isn’t even really the right word. 

Both Penny and Agatha have gotten increasingly fed up with my aversion towards Baz. I tried to explain that it’s because of how much he seems to have an aversion towards me. Agatha told me that’s bullshit, he’s just a no-nonsense type of guy, and apparently I’m completely made of nonsense. Penny called me out more on the matter. “Simon, you make friends with everyone. Even people who don’t want to be your friend, you still seem determined to be friends with them. For christ sake, Agatha didn’t even want to talk to you the first time you two met.”

“Yeah, but that’s different. We were in kindergarten, and that worked out,” I had retorted back. 

“Honestly Simon, you and Baz both act like kindergarteners still anyway.”

Handling the thought that Baz maybe doesn’t hate me has been more difficult than you would think. It’s like I don’t really know how to interact with him now (not that I did before.) It doesn’t matter that much when others are there. Somehow, out of nowhere, him and Penny became friends and I’m honestly relieved. It makes being around him simpler. Agatha seems disturbed by it. 

Sometime around last week, I decided that I am going to be forcefully nice to him. I ran the idea through with Penny, and she stared blankly at me for a moment then said, “Simon you’re forcefully nice to everyone. That’s just how you interact with you. That’s your normal.”

So I’m going to act normal around him. 

We’re piled in Agatha’s room, listening to music pumped up much louder than the neighbors are probably pleased with. I can’t get myself to care, though. Agatha is setting out an insane amount of pillows and blankets for Penny to use later. All sleepovers are held at mine and Agatha’s. We once tried to go over to Penny’s place, but you could practically feel the frustration radiating off of her mother each time I nudged a book or hit my shin on a box.

“I still don’t get why your parents won’t let me sleep in Simon’s room,” Penny says, tossing her phone to the other side of Agatha’s bed. 

Agatha rolls her eyes, but she’s not annoyed. “I’ve told you a million times, it’s ‘cause you’re a girl.”

“That’s sexist,” she points out. “And besides, it’s not like anything would happen. Simon is like my younger sister.” I throw a pillow at her, grinning. 

“Your younger sister?” 

Penny cackles. “Obviously. Honestly, I’m more likely to spend the night snogging Agatha than you Simon.”

I see Agatha blush and further busy herself rearranging the pillows. I catch her eye and raise an eyebrow. She just shakes her head. And then it dawns on me.

“Does that mean Baz is going to have to sleep in my room?”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Agatha. “Probably.”

I get a surge of panic. I can’t place why, but the idea of having Baz sleep in my room freaks me out. 

Penny’s phone buzzes.

“Mr. Edge-lord is here,” she announces. 

Baz

It is a little known fact that I have never been on a sleepover before. I can practically hear Bunce laughing at me. 

I had intended to spend this Friday night alone, in my room, watching Sherlock. But then Penelope texted me and I didn’t have an excuse for not going over. I wasn’t about to tell her I had intended to spend this Friday night alone, in my room, watching Sherlock. For all I can tell, they still think I’m cool. I am cool. 

My father was more excited than he should have been about me going out. He thinks I’m a recluse. It’s enigmatic, how he gets thrilled to see me wasting a night socially but claims dance is a distraction from my studies. He’s an expert bullshitter. My whole family is made up of expert bullshitters. 

Bunce started messaging me a little while back, rapid-fire one line spam style. Normally about something intellectual that she wanted my opinion on. When I asked how she got my number, the only response she gave was, “A bloody miracle, that’s how. You’re the most secretive person I know.”

I’m not good at texting, or any kind of online messaging really. I get anxious over it. It’s weird and pointless and gets in the way of communication. Because of all this I don’t give my number out. Or have any social media accounts. I like to think it makes me seem more mysterious. 

A young woman opens the door. I don’t think Agatha has any extended family living with her, so she must be some type of help, but she’s dressed in regular clothes. She smiles at me warmly. 

“Basilton, yeah?” she says, opening the door wider for me. As she does that, Agatha comes bounding down the stairs behind her. 

“Hey,” Agatha says. She waves me in. “This is Helen. Helen, Baz.” Helen gives a curt nod and Agatha turns around to head back up the stairs. “Come on. The party’s up here.”

I’ve only been here a few times, and only ever to pick Agatha up on the way to various dance events. Everything is clean and pristine looking, themed in white and blue. It’s quite lovely. 

“You can drop your stuff in Simon’s room, I think that’s where we’ll set you up to sleep.” I almost stop in my tracks. Simon and Agatha live together? I don’t comment on it or ask about it. This seems like something I should already know, considering. 

And then there’s the fact that I’m trying to keep my mind from sputtering at the thought of sleeping a room with Snow exclusively. 

She nudges open a door. “Just tuck your bag in there, we’ll set up your sleeping stuff later.”

When we get to Agatha’s room at the end of the hall, we are met with the sight of Snow and Bunch having a pillow fight. Like a pair of elementary school girls. 

“What the-“ says Agatha just as she’s hit by a stray pillow. She quickly ducks behind me, laughing. “A pillow fight? You guys are ridiculous.” 

“This is no mere pillow fight, this is a pillow war,” Bunce says, looking much too calculated and serious for this brand of chaos. 

“Hey!” Simon shouts, pointing at Agatha from behind a fortress of pillows and blankets he must have made for himself. “Human shields are against the rules.”

Then he shoots me a grin bright enough to blind someone, and something in my chest short circuits. 

Agatha grabs my arm and darts behind her bed, dragging me along with her. Once there, she grabs a pillow off the floor and launches it. It sails across the room and hits Snow square in the face. I snort. 

Good lord, is this what all teenagers do at sleepovers?

“I have a strategy,” Agatha whispers to me. She has a gleam in her eyes, the kind you’d see a scheming child have. “You’re going to give me a piggy-back right and I’m going to rain pillows down on our unsuspecting rivals.”

“You’re going to what?”

“Come one, there is no time for discussion.” She scoops up as many over stuffed pillows as she can hold with one arm and jumps at me. 

Obviously, we come out victorious. 

Snow actually took a white pillow case and waved it over his head shouting “surrender!”

I don’t know when the last time I felt this carefree was.

-  
We have sort of cleaned up the mess we made of the pillows (if you count making a giant pile in the middle of the room as cleaning.) Agatha and I started to put them into an actual bed arrangement, but then Penelope and Simon shrieks at us to stop because they want to make a pillow fort later and that’ll just mess it up again.

These two have the agenda of small children. 

I catch myself wondering what world I’ve stepped into. Wondering if this is just the life these three live, filled with pillow fights and forts and more laughter than should be allowed. 

I’m not sure I would even want to leave. 

It’s all so deliriously magical that I forget for a bit that I’m going to have to sleep in a room with only Simon Snow. I don’t think I’m going to survive this night. 

Simon

I’m laying across my bed sideways, half dangling off the mattress. Agatha went to sleep already. She is very adamant about getting at least eight hours every night. “Beauty sleep,” I like to call it. Penny is laying on what is supposed to be Baz’s sleeping space. 

Baz himself has been in the shower for forty minutes.

“He probably has some complicated posh skin care routine,” Penny says. “I bet if you skinned his face and sold it on the dark web you could make thousands.”

I prop myself up on my elbows. “What the fuck.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Pen, I love you, but you’re really creepy sometimes.”

“Thank you,” she says. “I get it from my mum.”

The moment Baz walks in the room smells like cedar and bergamot. He’s toweling off his damp hair, clad in joggers and a muscle tank top. 

I’m taken aback by how good he looks in joggers. I shouldn’t notice that, right?  
“Move,” he says, nudging Penny with his foot. She grumbles something nonsensical, stifling a yawn. 

“You should go to the other room and sleep,” I say, glancing at the clock on my nightstand. Ten thirty pm. How did that happen?

“Why can’t I stay in here,” she whines, drawing out the last word.

“‘Cause then Agatha’s mum will think Baz over here coerced us into having a threesome.”

I hear Baz make a noise that’s like a combination of a cough and a choke. When I look up at him he’s giving me a death glare. I grin in response. 

I’m going to kill this bastard with kindness. 

“And on that lovely note,” Penny says, getting up, “I bid you two a good night. Try not to kill each other before morning.” She leaves and it’s just me and Baz.

He tosses the towel onto his duffel bag and starts stretching. From my limited experience, it appears that dancers spend most of their free time stretching. It seems like he’s going to ignore me. I settle back onto my bed, looking at him upside down. 

“I didn’t realize you and Agatha live together,” he says breaking the silence. 

“Really?” I say. I thought that was just common knowledge. 

“Yeah. Really.” He sighs into whatever stretch posture he’s doing. I feel like I shouldn’t be watching him, like it’s an invasion of privacy. As if reading my mind, he cuts a cold glare in my direction. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

I feel my face heat and a spike of anger shoot through my spine. I flip him off.

“Wow, very mature,” he says. 

“You’re one to talk,” I bark back. And then I start uncontrollably laughing. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He’s in a normal sit now and looking at me like I’ve lost it, which I guess I have because I can’t stop laughing. 

“Damn, that’s the question isn’t it,” I say once I can speak again. I roll onto my stomach. He’s looking at me like he wants to punch me, and that sets me off laughing again. “Sorry, sorry, I’m not laughing at you. Well I kind of am, but not really.” He’s still glaring. 

“You’re incompetent.”

“I know, right?” I’m untouchable right now. All his insults are just funny. Any other time I know I’d be taking the bait and sniping back at him. “Jeez, mate, loosen up a bit.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Fuck, is that why you’re such a stick in the ass? You don’t know how to not be?” This time he flips me off. 

“Why do you live here, anyway?” he asks. He sounds resigned. Like he’s coming to terms with his fate of having to put up with me.

I’m a lot less panicky about this whole situation than I was earlier. It’s because of how late it is. I’m drunk on drowsiness. 

“Agatha’s parents are my legal guardians,” I say with a shrug. “Lived here for a couple years. Since eight grade.” I can tell he wants to ask more but he doesn’t. I’m glad.

He grunts. “That makes sense, I suppose.”

“We should play truth or dare,” I say, pushing myself into a seated position. 

“Excuse me?”

“You know. Truth or dare. You go first, ask me.”

“I will not,” he says, giving me the most taken aback and disgusted look. I’m going to have to fight for this.

“Come on, it’ll pass the time,” I say. Now I’m determined. I’m going to play truth or dare, whether this git likes it or not. 

Baz sighs, looking completely pained. “Fine. Truth or dare?”

Baz

This idiot is going to be the death of me. This painstakingly good looking idiot. He’s acting like he’s tipsy. Tipsy off of, what, sleep deprivation?

“Hmm,” he makes a big show of deciding. “Truth.” I sneer.

“Whimp.” He cocks an eyebrow at me. 

“Just give me a question.”

“I’m thinking.”

I’m hyper aware of his presence on the bed above me. I know that when we eventually need to sleep I won’t be able to. I can’t figure out why he’s not picking a fight with me. Being nice, even. It crosses my mind that it has to do with my halfway meltdown that day at the park. That it might be he pities me. He thinks I’m some fragile wreck that needs to be handled delicately. 

Or maybe he’s taking his “restart” idea really seriously. 

“I don’t think I know enough about you to base a question off of,” I say finally. Everything I think up sounds stupid, and I’m not going to ask about his first kiss or some other bullshit like a twelve-year-old girl. 

“That makes no sense,” he says. 

“Yes it does.”

“Then ask me stuff to get to know me better,” he says with a shrug. He shrugs a lot. 

“Maybe,” I say slowly, “I don’t want to get to know you.”

“You’re a prat, you know that?”

“Yes I do.”

There’s a beat of silence, and he’s looking at me expectantly. 

“Fine. What’s your favorite color?” I say, rolling my eyes. 

“That’s a horrible truth question,” he says, laughing. If he goes off on another laughing fit, I swear to god. I might drop dead. 

“Well we don’t have to play this stupid game-“

“No no no, I’m gonna answer it. Yellow. My favorite color is yellow.” I raise an eyebrow. 

“Yellow?”

“Yeah. It’s soft and, I dunno, happy.”

“That’s cute,” I say, sneering. It’s fucking adorable. I hate it. 

“Alright, next round,” Snow says. He then does a weird spider-like maneuver so that he’s no longer on the bed, instead seated across from me on the mound of pillows and blankets. We’re at the same level now. It feels a lot more intimate. I think it might trigger my fight or flight instincts. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” I say. I don’t trust him enough to opt for dare. 

“Now who’s the whimp?” I roll my eyes again. 

“Are you going to ask a question or not?”

“Why do you dance?” he blurts out. It’s like he had this question prepared. He doesn’t look to realize how loaded it is for me. 

“That’s a lot more complicated than favorite colors.”

“Answer the question.” Snow picks up one of the pillows between us and wraps his arms around it. Like a koala. 

I take a breath. 

“There isn’t one answer to that.” I think about stopping there, leaving it at that. But I keep going. “There’s always something to improve with in dance. You never run out of new things to try, techniques and what not. It’s, I don’t know, intellectually stimulating I guess. And physically stimulating. All round stimulating. There’s no way to dance half-heartedly. It’s impossible for me not to lose myself in it. When I’m dancing, that’s all I’m doing. I’m not somewhere else up here,” I gesture at my head, “I’m just there. Nowhere else. Once you get a little bit of that feeling, of being completely one thing, it’s hard not to want more.”

I stop. I’ve said way more than I meant to say, way more than I’ve said to anyone before. I’ve never even actually thought of it like that, but now that I’ve said it there’s certainly no other way for it to be put. 

I’ve just opened up a part of my heart to this tawny skinned buffoon. 

Snow is looking at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. I feel transparent. 

“I don’t know if any of that even makes sense,” I add hastily. 

“It does,” he says quietly. 

I can’t handle this.

“I’m going to sleep,” I say roughly, pushing myself back so that there’s more distance between us. Snow looks startled, taken aback. 

“Oh, okay,” he says, but he doesn’t move from my space. “Are you sure-“

“Yes, I’m sure,” I say. “What, did you think we were going to spend the whole night chatting like old friends?” I force as much sarcasm and snide into my voice, my instinct to ruin anything that could potentially be good kicking in. 

“Why are you so fucking difficult?” he says, gaping at me like I’m the most disgusting thing he’s seen. I deserve that. “I’m trying okay?”

He aggressively pushes himself off the floor, hits off the lights, and falls onto his bed. I pull a blanket up, curling in on myself. 

I’ve never been able to stop myself form hitting self-destruct. 

Simon

I’m fuming when I collapse onto my bed. 

Maybe the truth or dare thing was stupid. Okay, yeah, it was. He obviously didn’t want to talk to me from the get go. But we were getting somewhere. He was talking, really talking, and I was starting to think that he might not be a pompous asshole. That he might just act like that as a front. 

I still kind of think that, despite it all. 

The way he talked about dance. The way he looked when he talked about dance. Like that and that alone was his saving grace. I hadn’t planned to ask him that, but the second I thought of it I said it. There are a million bullshit things he could have said in response. But what he did say wasn’t bullshit. I think it started off that way, but then he got going. It was like he opened part of his soul or something. 

And then he stopped. 

Baz

I wake up to the sound of movement nearby where I am. Creaking and sudden motions. Like someone jumping on a bed. 

I’m disoriented, at first not sure where I am. The previous night comes back to me as my eyes adjust themselves to the dark room. The creaking is still there, and someone’s voice.

Simon’s voice. 

I stumble to my feet and see Snow thrashing about in his bed. He’s crying, and repeating “no,” and “I’m sorry,” over and over. He’s having a nightmare. 

I am paralyzed for a long moment. I don’t know what to do. What I’m supposed to do. There’s no protocol for seeing someone who probably hates you having a nightmare. Every sense I have is shouting at me to wake him, every nerve ending blaring at me to get him out of there, out of whatever he is reliving. 

I am by his side a second later. I gently grab a hold of his shoulder to stop him thrashing. 

“Snow,” I say quietly, then again louder. He jolts and for a second I think he’s going to punch me. For a second he must think I am whatever he was trying to survive in his head. Instead he slumps forward in my arms, a shudder and a sob racking through his body. 

Am I supposed to hold him, or is that crossing a line? This whole endeavor is most likely crossing a line. But I can’t move. I don’t move. Snow probably won’t even remember this in the morning. 

He is so warm.

Simon

My face has been on fire this entire morning. Penny is too much of a zombie to notice anything, but Agatha keeps giving me these questioning looks like she knows something is weird and i don’T know how to play if off as if something isn’t weird because everything right now is most definitely weird. 

When I woke up this morning, Baz was sleeping next to me. In my bed. 

I was practically curled around him like a koala. I can’t for the life of me figure out how that happened. I have a hunch, but I also don’t want that hunch to be proven right. 

I get nightmares a lot. Almost every night. They haven’t been as had recently. It’s always the same sort of thing, there’s always a narrow hallway with a door at the end and there’s always a man chasing me. The same man each time, but I don’t know who he is. I read somewhere once that every face you see in your dreams you’ve seen in real life, and that terrifies me. That means I’ve seen or even met the monster in my nightmares. 

In eighth grade I tried not sleeping to avoid going back there. Penny had to hold an intervention to convince me to get sleep. 

“Everyone sleep well?” Agatha asks from where she’s sitting. I feel my face heat up anew. 

“Yeah, fine,” I mumble at the same time Penny says, “sleep is for the weak.” I give her a look and she just stares at me blankly. 

Agatha and Penny are tucked into the breakfast nook next to the kitchen window. Penny is nursing a coffee. Agatha’s parents are out on some Saturday morning rendezvous and Helen has the day off, so we have free reign. I’m making pancakes. The other two are hopeless at food-prep. They joke a lot about how I’m the only one with house wife potential. 

“Where’s Baz?” Penny asks, squinting at me. My face heats up again. 

“In the bathroom,” Agatha says. “Probably going through some beauty routine.”

Baz 

I am never leaving this bathroom.

I woke up this morning to something next to me moving. And then I realized that something was Simon Snow. And then I realized he was next to me because I was still in his bed. 

I sprang up, as if that would help. In my groggy state of still half asleep, the thought process was that if I move fast enough he won’t realize I was there. But he was already up and there was an agonizingly awkward moment where we locked eyes before I dashed to the bathroom. 

Why didn’t I say right off it was because he had a nightmare and I tried to comfort him? Now it seems like I was doing something else, that something being probably more on the creepy side of things. 

I can’t face him. Obviously I need to get out of this house. And then I’ll move, change my name, and pretend this never happened. 

I am over thinking this. 

Maybe he won’t think I have some perverted agenda. He seems like the sort to give people the benefit of the doubt. I don’t have a perverted agenda. 

I splash water on my face and take a deep breath. I am Basildon fucking Grimm-Pitch, things like this don’t get to me. I can handle a bit of awkward tension. 

I am completely in control. 

-  
I am very much not in control. 

The moment I step out of the bathroom I walk straight into Snow. He’s sputtering out an apology. I give him a blank look and raise an eyebrow. My insides may feel like they are about to crawl out, but I’ll be damned if he can tell. I hadn’t been awake enough to stay calm and collected this morning when the whole mess started, but if I had I want the records to show that I would have gotten myself out of the situation. Sadly I wasn’t. 

He stops rambling. 

“Sorry,” Snow says, running a hand through his hair. He has a severe case of bed head, bronze curls springing out all over the place. I want to fix it and then mess it up again. “I came to get you ‘cause I made pancakes and they’ll all be gone if we leave it to Agatha and Penny.”

I nod. I try to push past him but he blocks my path. 

“About this morning,” he says. His face is bright red. 

“Yes, about that,” I say slowly. “That was weird. I apologize if-“

“You don’t need to apologize,” he says quickly. “I’m pretty sure I know what happened. Lets just,” he pauses, fumbling for his words, “not make it awkward. Okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.” Is it really this easy?

His face opens into the most blindingly brilliant smile, but falters a second after.

“Um, another thing.” He looks at the floor away from me. “Could you maybe not mention the whole nightmare thing to Penny and Agatha?”

I raise my eyebrows in response. I hadn’t been intending to tell them, but that still wasn’t something I expected him to check up on. 

“It’s just that I, uh, told them a while ago that I don’t get them anymore. The nightmares.” He sounds so uncertain. This must really matter to him. 

I nod again. “I won’t say anything.”

-  
I realize later that I might have more than just a slight crush on Simon Snow.


	6. Chapter 6

Simon

It’s a competition day. They have a lot of those, sometimes once a week. There must be a “competition season,” because it feels like it switches off between them getting a break and practically living in the dance halls. 

Agatha gets very testy when doing her hair and makeup. She’ll give herself hours of leeway to work on it so she can take her time yet always still ends up stressed by the end of it. It’s a whole ordeal. Her mum tried to help her on it once, but that was even more of a nightmare. Tears were shed. 

It’s ridiculously early by most people’s standards. I’m normally up at around now if not a little later, but that’s me. I have a hard time sleeping late. Honestly, I would consider going to seven thirty to be sleeping in. I sent Penny a sneaky picture of Agatha with her hair pinned in every direction, and I know she won’t open the text ’til hours later. Penelope is not much of a morning person. 

Neither is Agatha, frankly. 

I made the mistake of trying to talk to her. She nearly shouted at me, then had to close her eyes and take three deep breaths. It would have been funny if I didn’t feel bad for disrupting her. Now I’m sitting quietly in the corner, clicking around on my computer. 

“Stop sulking,” Agatha says. She doesn’t sound angry or anything. I’ve learned not to take her bursts of frustration personally. 

“I’m not sulking,” I say. It looks like she’s almost done. Her hair is, in the least, and that’s the part she stresses about the most. She’s making herself shimmer even more than normal, with all the glitters and highlighters. I don’t know what half of these products are - I only pay attention to the colorful bits. 

“Does Baz have to wear makeup for your stuff?” I ask, figuring it’s safe to initiate conversation now. She lets out a laugh, easing up a bit. 

“He doesn’t have to but he does anyway.” Of course he does. That sounds like him. 

I had been completely ready for things to remain horribly awkward between us. Baz and I. But it’s been alright. Looser, even. I’d go so far as to say he’s a friend of mine now. It doesn’t take much for me to consider someone my friend. I’m a friend collecting kind of person. Penny thinks it’s a catastrophe. I’m not sure if he’d consider me a friend of his, but that’s fine. I can’t expect to win every battle. 

-  
Agatha is much more competitive than Baz. You’d think it would be the other way around. She gets this game face every time before they go on. It’s the face of someone who could kill a man. 

In a lot of ways Agatha and Baz look like polar opposites. He’s full of cool tones, dark and drawn while she is basically a light trail. They definitely use it to their advantage. They compliment and contrast each other at the same time. It’s impossible to not let your eyes gravitate towards them, at least for me. 

Today is one of the rare days where we’re sitting next to Baz’s family, his mum and younger sister I assume. There’s some weird dispute between his family and Agatha’s that I don’t really understand. It all seems petty, if you ask me. But i’ve never actually met Baz’s family, so who am I to judge. 

This woman is cheering almost as loudly as I am and that’s saying something because I’m really going all out. 

“I’m Simon,” I say to her when the comp is between heats because it feels weird and rude to not introduce myself. I kind of feel like I should already know her, considering. “I’m Agatha’s support crew.” She laughs at that. 

“Daphne,” she says, shaking my hand. “I’m Baz’s stepmother.” Oh. That’s why they look nothing alike. “This is Mordelia,” she gestures at the girl who looks like she’s hiding behind her. I’m guessing somewhere around eight to ten years old. She’s peering at me with a look very akin to one I’ve seen Baz make. I smile at both of them, then turn my attention back to the dance floor. 

Baz

We leave with a few new trophies. I’m content. 

Agatha jump-hugs me when we get off the floor. She does that after everything, competitions, shows, and that filming thing we’ve been doing. It’s sweet. Every installment is a reason to celebrate to her. She links her arm with mine as we’re walking to where her family has set up camp and I roll my eyes but go along with it anyway. This girl is a full stop dork, and no one but me seems to notice because they’re all too busy with the fact that she’s pretty. As is society, but I digress. 

When we get to the table I see that Snow is talking to Daphne and Mordelia. He’s smiling and gesturing while saying something, probably in full charm mode. I feel weak. It’s pathetic. Mordelia is looking at him like she’s disgusted and trying to figure out what species he is. I wonder if I look like that when he talks to me. Probably do. 

I haven’t had as much difficulty being around Snow as I thought I would after my little epiphany. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a total nightmare. There’s a lot less to navigate when you’re simply attracted to someone than when you have “feelings” for them. Now I have to deal with my fucking emotions. I’m already bad enough at that in other situations. I’m a Pitch. We don’t do emotions. But it could be a lot worse. I can ignore it for the most part. Play cool. I’m damn lucky he’s as oblivious as they get. 

“I could eat a horse,” Agatha says, tearing me back down to earth. 

“Same, actually.” 

I have a problem with forgetting to eat before competitions. Not even forgetting, really, just not wanting to. It’s never affected my dancing. Or my health, for that matter. The being hungry part only hits me after we finish dancing. 

Snow waves when we get closer. He’s like a golden retriever puppy. A golden retriever puppy with a short temper. 

That’s something I’ve noticed. He’s like a fuse and it only takes something small to set him off. I’ve assumed the common role of that something. 

Working him to a bluster shouldn’t be as fun as it is. 

-  
“Agatha’s friend is so sweet,” Daphne says on the car ride home. Mordelia has fallen asleep in the backseat, and I’m close to following suit. 

“He’s the personification of a calamity,” I say monotonously, eyes glued out the window. 

I suppose I’m closer to Daphne than most teenagers would be to a step parent. If i had met her when I was already old enough to know I should be pissed off by her existence, it would probably be different. But I was six and she gave me chocolate and books. Back then that was all it took to win me over. 

“Well I think he’s sweet,” she says. “You should spend some time with him. He seems like a positive influence.”

A positively frustrating influence, I think to myself. 

Baz

I get a call from Bunce as I’m practicing violin on a Monday. I think about ignoring it. I shouldn’t have to be available twenty-four seven. And it probably isn’t an emergency. I can’t imagine she would call me of all people in an emergency. 

I answer the phone. 

“You better have a good reason for this,” I say into the phone. 

“I wouldn’t brave the horrors of calling your private number if I didn’t,” says Bunce. I raise an eyebrow even though I know she can’t see it. Habit. 

“Private number?”

“It was a joke, I was trying to be funny. Why does everyone act like me making casual jokes is mind reeling?” I laugh a bit. 

“Stick to blunt humor, it’s more your color.”

“Anyway,” she says deliberately. “Could you come over to Agatha’s sometime this afternoon? Me and Simon have something to show you.”

“Simon and I,” I correct. She’s silent for a minute. 

“Did you really just…”

“Yes, I did.” I’m grinning. Lord, having an intelligent acquaintance is really something. 

“I don’t know if I want to hug you or hit you right now.”

“How’s about we do neither and avoid physical contact altogether?”

“So are you coming or not?” she says. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there.” I start putting my violin back in it’s case. I’ve lost the concentration I had earlier. “What time?”

“Literally, just show up as soon as you can. I’m incredibly impatient today.”

There go my plans to skulk around the mansion like an adolescent Dracula. 

I run into Mordelia as I’m leaving. “I”m going out,” i say because she’s staring at me dubiously. That’s practically all she spends her time doing. 

“I’m telling mum,” she calls out. Because this kid has nothing better to do. 

“Good,” I say back. “It’ll stop her from sending out a search party.”

Simon

Penny enlisted my help on a tech project a couple days ago because she knows jack-all about computers. 

We’re in the TV room watching cooking shows when Agatha comes in, grabbing the purse she left on the couch. 

“Wait where are you going?” Penny asks. 

“I’m meeting up with Minty?” Agatha says like it’s a question. She’s stalled in the doorway.

“I thought that was later,” I say. Penny has a plan she wants to follow through with and I know she’ll get huffy if she has to rearrange. 

“Yeah but we’re not doing anything so I’m gonna get boba on the way.”

“You don’t need boba. I have something t show you and Baz but I can’t until Baz gets here.”

“You invited Baz to my house without telling me?”

I think one of my biggest problems is that I find Penny and Agatha’s arguments funny and I never know when to interject. Or what even constitutes an actual argument. This one time they didn’t talk to each other for a week over a conversation and I had thought they were just having a friendly back and forth banter at the time. 

Penny points at me. “It’s Simon’s house too.”

“Right, and I’m supposed to believe that Simon willingly invited Baz over.” She gives me a look. Both Penny and Agatha would make terrifying mothers. They both have mastered every kind of skeptical and disappointed facial expression. More often than not it’s directed at me. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask. 

“It means that all you ever do is complain about Baz and I really can’t imagine you going out of your way to spend time with him,” Agatha says exasperatedly. 

“Well that’s ‘cause he’s a prick.”

“Exactly. What point are you even trying to prove here?” She fists her hand into her hair. “Look, I’ll wait just to humor you, but I really don’t get where this is all coming from.”

-  
Baz drives a Jaguar. It’s black and sleek and expensive looking. He’s leaning on it looking all cool and posh. I was sent to see him in. he could have honestly seen himself in on his own, the side door was unlocked. Agatha told me I have the hosting capabilities of a mushroom. I could have pushed further on how Baz isn’t inept, but decided against it. We’re in dangerous waters with her mood right now, and I do want her to like what Penny and I made. 

“Don’t you look presentable,” Baz says mockingly as he pushes himself off the car and walks up the front steps. I glance down at what I’m wearing, feeling my face heat up. I’m in these really bright red basketball shorts and a Marvel t-shirt. Throw together outfit. Of course he’s kitted out in a tight fitting button-up rolled at the sleeves and dark jeans. They’re nice jeans. He looks good in jeans. He looks good in everything and it’s irritating. 

“Thanks,” I say blankly. I lead him back to the den. Penny has my computer ready. Someday I’m going to regret letting her know my password. Hopefully that day isn’t soon. Agatha is passive aggressively clicking on her phone, Penny pointedly ignoring the tension in the room. 

“Alright, why am I here?” Bad says, sitting in one of the chairs across from the couch. He takes up as much space in it as he can. Like he’s sitting on a throne, overseeing his kingdom. 

“I would love to know the answer to that,” Agatha says. She puts down her phone, turning her sharp gaze to Penny. 

“Okay,” Penny hops up, cradling the computer. “Simon and I made a thing for you. It’s fine if you don’t like it, we can redo it or delete it all together if you want.”

“What?” I say incredulously. “I’d be crushed if you don’t like it, I spent hours on this.”

Baz has an eyebrow raised and Agatha looks uncertain, scared even. We’re drawing this out a tad ore than we need to. 

“Well, have a look.” She turns the computer around, putting it on the couch so we all can crowd around. 

On it is a website dedicated to Agatha and Baz’s ballroom dancing career. I gave it a minimalistic and elegant looking theme, something that fits both of them. Clean fonts, thing brackets and borders. It’s mainly in grayscale, with images being the main pop of color. There are pop-ups about upcoming events they’ll be in, a link to the costume designer that sponsors them, and a small about page with a little bio for each of them. It’s full of the best action shots of them dancing that I could find on Agatha’s dad’s camera. The highlight though, the thing it’s really showcasing, is the videos we took and edited. 

“The concept was my idea, but Simon did all of the actual designing and making,” Penny says softly. “We figured you might want someplace nice to display it all.”

“Especially when you’re famous and all,” I add, grinning. 

Agatha looks like she’s about to start crying. All of her irritation from earlier is completely drained away. She’s scrolling through the page and clicking on all the little add-ons.

“I love you two idiots so much,” she whispers. 

I glance at Baz. He has a look of pure surprise and wistfulness frozen on his face. 

“Whadya think?” I say to him. He studies my face and I can’t really read his expression. 

“You really did all this?”

I shrug. “It’s not that much really. I was super into coding a few years ago and I kinda figured out the rest as-“

“Thank you,” he says quietly, cutting off my ramble. “This is really something.”

-  
Agatha goes off to hang out with her people a bit after the emotion fest. I have to constantly remind myself that she has a life outside of this bubble. They’re getting manicures or something like that. 

Penny and I both go back to watching the baking competition on TV. They’re making some high quality, fancy cookies. Damn I could go for some cookies now. Or scones. I can always go for a scone. 

“I should go,” Baz says starting to stand. Now I might be mistaken, but he looks unnerved. Not used to being around so many emotion expressing people. 

That might not actually be too far off of a guess. 

“You don’t have to,” Penny says, not looking away from the screen. “Unless you’ve got something better than hanging out with us to do today.”

He gets this look and I know he’s about to quip back with something nasty, so I butt in. 

“Do you like cookies?” I ask him. He raises an eyebrow. Him and his fucking eyebrow. 

“Yes..?”

“Alright,” I jump up off the couch. “I’m making cookies. It’s that kind of a day.”

“Fuck yes!” Penny shouts jumping up after me. 

“Okay then,” I hear Baz mutter. 

Baz

I don’t know what kind of a day it has to be to make cookies. These people are so weird. I follow them into the kitchen. I’ve been in here before, but I take in how quaintly decorated it is again. It’s a contrast to the rest of the house, less clean cut. There’s a surplus of chickens. A chicken clock, a chicken napkin holder, and a few ceramic chickens along with some other farm animals. Agatha’s family has a strange obsession with kitchenware chickens. 

Simon is blundering around, pulling out bowls and flour. Bunce hoists herself up so that she’s sitting on one of the counters. I’m not sure what to do with myself. I end up sitting at the window nook. 

“What kind are you making?” Penelope asks. She’s aggressively tapping on her phone. Texting, probably. I find it hard to imagine Bunce having a lot of friends outside of Snow, so the recipient of these potential texts is a mystery to me. 

“Chocolate chip. Maybe caramel chips too. I’ll figure that out when I get there.”

I’m pretending to read on my phone, but I’m mainly watching Snow. He isn’t measuring out anything or using a recipe. He must do this a lot. It’s endearing, the thought of him spending his free time baking. 

With flour covered hands Snow fishes his phone out of his pocket and slides it to Bunce, successfully getting flour everywhere. 

“Put on some music,” he says. “We need a soundtrack for this.”

They have a built-in sound system. The room is flooded with some indie sounding band that I’ve never heard before. It’s peaceful. 

Snow does this ridiculous and ungraceful spin with his socks on the tile so that he’s face me. “You like chocolate and caramel, yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah, I do,” I say slowly. I’m about to ask how he knows that but he shrugs before I can. 

“You always get that on your Starbucks drinks when we go with Agatha,” he says simply. “Anyway that settles what kind these are gonna be.”

He’s payed attention to what I get at Starbucks. 

The song switches to something more upbeat, the same artist I think. Snow perks up when the song picks up tempo and starts bobbing his head and sliding around to the beat. He’s holding a bowl with one hand and mixing it’s contents with the other. 

“If you fall and drop that I’m going to laugh,” I say. Snow grins at me. He shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Smile. It should be illegal. If I ever gain regional power, I’m going to make it illegal. 

He gets everything set and in the oven without any mishaps (at least from what I can see.) The cookies have only been in there for less than a minute and a lovely aroma is already filling the room. 

Snow flops in the bench across from me. He’s still bobbing along to the music. Then he starts drumming along on the table and, lord help my gay ass, singing. Like that time in the car, but more boisterous. More out there. He abandons the drumming to start incorporating hand gestures that are all directed at me. He’s taken on a “lead singer in a boy band” persona and apparently I’m playing the part of his teenage girl audience. Bunce hasn’t even batted an eye at all of this. 

“You look like you’re planning my death,” he says, dropping his arms back onto the table and falling forward. 

“That’s because I am.” You adorable fuck. I don’t say the last part out loud. 

“Is the music not reaching your soul?”

“Um. No.”

Bunce’s phone goes off just then. She answers it right away and jumps off the counter. 

“Hey,” she says into it. She mouths “I’ll be right back,” and trots into the room next over. 

“What was that?” I say to Snow. 

“Boyfriend, probably,” he says. 

“Penelope has a boyfriend?” I say with the hint of a sneer. 

“Yeah, he lives in America,” he says with a shrug. “Nice bloke from what I can tell. I don’t really know him that well. Still gotta give him the third degree.” He goes quiet. I’m trying to study his face without him being able to notice I’m staring. For a second he looks like he’s forgotten how to talk. 

I’ve noticed he does that sometimes (because I’ve reached the point of patheticness that I’m noticing small things about him.) He’ll look like he gets lost trying to find his next words. Or that the words get stuck somewhere. 

“What kind of music do you like?” he says once he’s regained himself. I raise an eyebrow instinctively. “It’s just that I feel like I should know more about you. Being that we’re friends and all.”

I freeze. 

“We’re friends?” I try not to sound so goddamn hopeful. 

Snow shrugs. “In my book, yeah. You didn’t answer the question, though.”  
I think for a second. He’s looking at me intently. “I guess I don't really have a particular favorite genre. It depends on my mood. I like classical sometimes. When I’m trying to concentrate or cool down. But I also like Duran Duran and Bowie and Sting.” And Lana Del Rey when I’m feeling piney. 

He’s looking at me with a peculiar smile. I feel my face flush.

“What?” I say when he doesn’t stop. 

“Why do you always answer questions super slowly?” he asks. “It’s like you’re scared I’m gonna use your answer against you. If anything I should be the one that’s scared. You always look like you’re plotting.”

“I don’t do that,” I say, smirking. “And I am always plotting. You should live in fear.”

“Nah, I don’t think I’d be able to find you scary.” He’s leaning on his hand, peering at me from across the table with this half-smile. 

I think he’s flirting with me. He has to be flirting with me. This is how people act when they’re flirting, isn’t it? Or maybe he’s just being friendly and I’m not used to it. I swear, if it were anyone but him I’d be able to tell. But. His body language. The way he’s talking to me. The way he’s looking at me. 

Th oven timer goes off and Snow hops up. 

I must have imagined it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aLiVE
> 
> There is no reason to why I have disappeared - considering that the fic is EnTiRElY wRitTEn alREadY - besides procrastination and stress. I put posting on the back burner and then on the back burner of the back burner. So here we are. 
> 
> However, the rest of this is gonna go up in the next two weeks which is a lil late considering that it started in, oh I dunno, FebRuArY.
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with it through all my unnecessary sterf <3

Simon

Agatha’s parents really like having family dinner. That was one of the weirdest things to transition to when I moved in. I was so used to dinners at the homes where I’d scarf down as much of the tasteless food they served as quickly as possible before rushing out of the dining room. Sometimes I wouldn’t even be able to eat because of how many people there were. I don’t fare well in crowds. 

Helen cooks for us. I like to help her sometimes. The only day we don’t have family dinner is Friday night. That’s Helen’s day off and Agatha’s parents like to have a date night. I cook those days. Normally Penny comes over. 

We’re having shepherds pie. I really love food. Good food. 

“So Agatha,” says Dr. Wellbelove. I still call him that. Even after all this time calling him anything other would be weird. He once tried to have me call him uncle and Mrs. Wellbelove aunty, but none of us could really get it to stick. “Are you feeling good about your prep for the big competition?”

Her and Baz have a competition at the end of the month at some festival that’s supposed to be really important. She’s told me that it could make or break their dance career. 

“I think so,” she says. I know she’s nervous for it. “I’m practicing a lot. I think it’ll go well.”

“You know, there’s still time for a partner switch,” her father says. “I know we could find someone better than that Pitch boy.”

I see Agatha stiffen from where I am next to her. “I like dancing with Baz.”

Dr. Wellbelove sighs. I’ve seen them have this conversation in the past. Before I knew anything about Baz besides him having a resting bitch face (I don’t really like that term but it’s the most fitting when it comes to him.) Now, though, I care a bit more because despite whatever Agatha’s parents have against him, Baz doesn’t deserve to be talked about like this. 

“We just want what’s best for you,” Agatha’s mother says. 

“I think Baz is better than any other partner you’d find,” I say. There is a silence as all three of them look at me. I normally don’t interject when it comes to things like this. I keep going. “You’ve seen them dance together. It’s not like any of the other couples. They’ve got something, I don’t know what it is but it works.”

“Simon, dear, I don’t think you really know what you’re talking about,” says Mrs. Wellbelove. She can be very condescending at times. It’s where Agatha gets it from. I feel a spike of anger but shove it down.

“I probably know as much about dance as you. Baz is a solid guy.” I’m getting more heated about this than I know I should. None of this is really my business. Agatha can defend Baz if she really needed to. But I feel like I should be the one doing it. Defending Baz. “And besides this is Agatha’s choice anyway.”

“Yeah,” Agatha says slowly. “And I don’t want a new partner.”

-  
Agatha grabs onto my sleeve as I’m walking up to my room after dinner. 

“I didn’t realize you and Baz were such good friends,” she says. There’s something in her tone that makes me suspicious. I don’t know what her motive is here.

I shrug anyway. “I didn’t really realize either. It’s kind of a new development.”

She studies my face for a moment longer then smiles. 

“I’m glad. I think he could use a friend like you.”

Baz

“Basilton.” My father is standing in the doorway to my room. He’s probably going to tell me to turn the music down. I’m not playing it that loud but his study is just down the hall from my room so I get it. “I have something I’d like you to look over.” He lifts up a pamphlet. I stand up to be at the same level and see what it is. Because it would be too personal for him to sit down next to me. Not my father’s style at all. 

It’s about some academic summer camp. I wish he had just come to tell me to shut off the music. 

“I have a lot going on with dance this summer,” I say. I don’t take the pamphlet. 

“Basil,” he says warningly. “At least look at it.”

“My grades are perfectly fine.” I cross my arms. “I’m at a higher level than most of my classmates.”

“And you want to keep it like that, don’t you?” he sounds like he’s actually asking but I know it’s bait to trap me in my own words. This shouldn’t matter this much to him. I hate that it matters this much to him. He sighs, muttering, “I told Natasha not to sign you up fro dance classes when-“

“Don’t bring my mother into this,” I growl. “If there’s anyone to blame for the way I am, it’s me.” And you, I think. Because, of anyone, you were the one that shaped me. “Not her.”

I already know how the rest of this is going to go. He’ll get more enraged by my talking back and we’ll spit at each other until I submit just to make it stop. Not because I think he’s right. Then we’ll go into separate rooms and come out later pretending nothing happened. 

And repeat. 

I don’t think I want to do it today. But I’ve never learned how to do anything else. 

“Why can’t you respect what I think is right for you?” He doesn’t shout. He must have realized somewhere along the way that he’s more intimidating when he keeps his voice low. When he puts gravel and nails in every syllable. 

“Because what you think isn’t right.”

This is my cue to storm off so he can go be comforted by Daphne and I can go hide in my room and hate myself for caring about what he thinks. 

Or maybe I can leave. That was never an option before. But maybe it is now. 

I call Agatha. I ignore the potential ways that this could go wrong. 

“Are you doing anything today?” I say quickly before the rest of my mind can catch up and remind me that I don’t ask for help. Especially for things like this. 

“Not right now, but I’m leaving the house in like an hour.” She stops for me to either ask if I can come over or say I’ll see her at dance tomorrow and hang up. I don’t do either. I say nothing. “Are you okay?” she says gently. Perceptive. I’m about to lie but I remember why I’m calling. 

“Not exactly,” I say. But that makes it sound worse than it is. It’s not like I’m about to have a break down. I’m not. I wouldn’t break down over something petty like this. “I will be, I’ve just. Not had a fantastic day.”

“How about you come over then. You need a distraction yeah?” I don’t deserve this much kindness. “I won’t be here for too long, but Simon will be. My parents are visiting my aunt tonight so you don’t have to worry about them or anything.”

“I think I’ll be fine,” I say because the rest of my mind has caught up and is reminding me that I don’t know how to accept help. 

“Look,” she says, sterner than earlier. “I don’t know what’s up, but it’ll make me feel better if you come over. Okay?”

“Okay.” 

Simon

Agatha pops her head through the doorway to my room. Her eyebrows are knitted together in a concerned way. 

“You doing anything?” she asks.

I am doing something, but probably not by her standards. Penny getting me to make that website resparked an obsession. I’ve started like five tiny coding projects just for the fun of it. By the end of the summer there are going to be a million useless blogs without any actual content made by me. But they’ll look fucking good. 

“Nothing big,” I say. 

“Okay, good. Baz is coming over and I need you to hang out with him.” She ducks back out of the room. 

“What?” I call out. She comes back a second later, sighing. 

“I don’t know, something happened I think. He called me and I invited him over. I’ll be here for a bit but I figured you wouldn’t mind. Do you mind?”

I pause. I really don’t mind. He’s been a lot easier to be around recently. And I stand by what I said about us being friends. Don’t get me wrong he’s still a prick, but a decent prick. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I get it, but I know other people might not. I pause because I feel like I should mind. And because I feel like Baz is going to mind. If something legitimate happened, I doubt he wants me to be the one comforting him. 

“It’s fine,” I say. 

“Great. And, uh,” she gives me this pointed look that I think she picked up from Penny. “Put a shirt on before he gets here.”

“But it’s hot,” I whine, drawing out the last word. 

“And you have air conditioning for a reason.” She leaves again. I flop back onto my bed. The AC is already on but it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. I’m not putting on a shirt. Baz won’t care. If he does care, I’ll put a shirt on. 

I stifle a yawn. My nightmares have been getting worse and worse recently and last night I just. Couldn’t. I woke up somewhere around one am and couldn’t handle going back. Penny would kill me if she knew I was starting to fall back on the habit of not sleeping. One time doesn’t really count as falling back on a habit. 

When you word it like that it sounds like I’m talking about an addiction. I’m not addicted to anything that has to do with my nightmares. 

About twenty minutes later there’s a knock on my door. 

“Yeah?” I shout. Baz enters, dropping a canvas bag on the floor. He gives me a once over, a look of disgust on his face. 

“Agatha told me to shout at you if you weren’t wearing a shirt.”

“Shout away,” I say, turning back to my computer. He doesn’t seem upset. But even I can tell that Baz probably isn’t the kind of guy to wear his emotions on his sleeve. I glance up. “I’ll put a shirt on if it makes you uncomfortable.” He’s fixed me with a hard stare. “But I don’t want to.”

He slumps into my desk chair, sitting backwards so that he’s leaning his chin on the backing. He’s still sort of glaring at me. I wonder if he knows how to stop. 

“Is Agatha still in?” 

“No, she was leaving when I got here.” He sounds distant. I realize that I really want to know what happened and why he’s here. 

Baz

Snow isn’t wearing a shirt and I’m determinedly focusing my attention elsewhere. The walls are my current focal point. 

His room is the epitome of a teen coming of age film. An independent one from Sundance. What would be a lovely gray toned wall paper is layered with movie and band posters, a lot of them with titles I’ve never heard of. There’s a shelf in the corner overflowing with comic books and picture frames. Pictures of him and Bunce, pictures of Agatha, multiple pictures of a dog (old family pet?) I’m envious of the amount of personality this one space has. From what I’ve gathered, Snow has only lived here for about three or four years. I've slept in the same bed my entire life and have never been able to make it into a place I would willingly spend my time. 

Everything about this colorful mess of clutter fits him so well. It’s the perfect picture, him all limbs sprawled out on an unmade bed surrounded by color. 

Shirtless.

“Are you okay?” Snow asks. It breaks my train of thought which is good because my train of thought was starting to slip back to the moles dotting his back and how I want to count them. 

“Divine,” I say with a sneer. I’m actually not feeling as horrible as I could be. I haven’t been thinking as much about the argument as I normally do after a moment like that. I’ll never admit to it, but Snow’s presence is calming. Grounding. Somehow he’s keeping me from going there. 

Maybe it’s just because he’s that much of a distraction. 

“You can talk about it if you want,” he’s studying my face and I pray to whatever celestial power exists that I’m not blushing. “You don’t have to but you can.”

He looks back down at the laptop and goes back to typing, like he didn’t just give me permission to unload a shit ton of family baggage that I’ve held onto for who knows how long. Like it was the most casual thing in the world. 

“I had an argument with my father,” I say quietly. He looks up and I think for a second he might not have heard what I said. He slowly closes the laptop and pulls himself up so that he’s sitting instead of laying on his stomach. I glance away because he’s very much still not wearing a shirt.

“What about?” he asks. My instinct is to snap with something sarcastic but I realize that I don’t actually want to be cold. For once, I think I might want to open up. 

I sigh, wrapping my arms around myself. This room is like antarctica.

“He doesn’t,” I pause, looking for the right word. I don’t want to paint him as a villain because I know he isn’t. But that doesn’t change the way I feel. “He doesn’t really approve of me spending all my time dancing.”

Snow looks totally taken aback by that and I almost laugh at how comical his facial expression is. “Why?”

“Because it’s a ‘waste of my valuable time.’” I say, complete with air quotes. “And I think he would prefer if I did a sport instead.”

“Well that’s bullshit,” Snow practically shouts. I raise an eyebrow. I wouldn’t have expected him to get so fired up over this. But I guess that’s Snow. All emotion and brute force. 

“First off dance is a sport. And people need to stop questioning whether or not you and Agatha should be dancing together. There probably isn’t anything else in this world that makes as much sense as you two.” He stops and takes a breath. 

The amount of passion that he has for something that shouldn’t even matter to him is breath taking. 

“Sorry,” he says. He runs a hand through his hair sheepishly. “It’s just that I think anyone who actually watches you dance should think it’s obvious that you can’t quit.”

I let out a mirthless laugh. “My dad doesn’t really watch that often.” Snow raises his eyebrows at me. 

“I’m sorry but your father’s an asshole.” I laugh for real this time. I’m berating the part of my mind that’s been telling me talking about serious subjects would end catastrophically. 

“Families are weird,” I say more to myself than Snow. 

“I wouldn’t really know.” Oh. Right. Fuck, now I’m realizing how insensitive everything I’ve been saying is. 

“Fuck, sorry,” I say. I’m a horrible person. “I didn’t mean for that to-“

“No no, you’re fine,” he says. He looks surprised for a second then starts laughing. “I mean, I guess I do know. Sorta. It’s different though.”

There’s a comfortable pause in the conversation. I’m not used to it. In my house, silences are never comfortable (I wouldn’t consider anything comfortable.) They aren’t book ended with meaningful conversation. 

I don’t think Snow is going to continue on with what he was saying and I feel pathetically disappointed by that. I want to know what he meant by that. I want to know what his life has been like. I want to know.

So I push past any further judgement and ask, “What do you mean?”

He seems thoughtful for a few moments. It’s a good look on him. 

“I don’t really know if I would consider the Wellbelove’s my family,” he says slowly. Self consciously. “Agatha and Penny, they’re my family. But this dynamic and house and stuff.” He looks at me and shrugs. “Nuclear family’s a little over rated, don’t you think?”

I nod, a bit gobsmacked by how close to insightful that was. 

I feel myself shiver and tuck my legs up onto the chair I’m sitting on. Snow cocks his head to the side. 

“Are you cold?” he asks. 

“Are you not?” I gesture at his very much still shirtless form. He laughs with ease, running a hand through his hair again. 

“Nah, I overheat like a really old computer a lot of the times. I didn’t realize it was cold for you in here.” 

“It’s fucking freezing.” He puts his arms up in a surrender. 

“Jeez, calm down.” He grabs a red jumper that was strewn across the pillows behind him and throws it at me. “There you can borrow that.”

It smells like him. Like burning wood and bread. 

“You know,” Snow says as he lays down on his side, propped up by an elbow. Every single muscle shift is on full display. “I like talking to you more than fighting you.”

I smirk to cover up the fact that my heart might have just stopped. 

“We didn’t really fight before,” I point out. He rolls his eyes. 

“Fine, I like talking more than you acting all snooty and constantly having to restrain myself form punching you.”

I let out an involuntarily loud and obnoxious snort. 

“What do you mean ‘acting all snooty?’”

Snow’s face flushes and he stumbles over his words, all “I mean”’s and “um”’s, and I don’t cut him off because it’s really fucking cute. I’m smirking and he stops blustering to glare at me. 

“You have a lot of snooty facial expressions,” he says very deliberately. “And don’t even ask me to explain because I know you do them intentionally.”

“Right,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. 

“You probably practice in front of the mirror or something,” he says with a stupid gleam in his eyes. 

“I do not,” I say, grabbing a stray pillow off his floor and launching is at him. 

“Very convincing,” he says between fits of laughter. Snow’s laugh isn’t really what one would call musical, but it’s amazing. He doesn’t hold back at all when he’s laughing. 

Fuck my life, I’ve got it bad. 

Simon

Once I’ve calmed down from my laughing fit I shift so that I’m sitting up again and toss the pillow Baz threw at me to the side. The shirt I was wearing earlier is bundled up at the end of my bed. I have an inkling that I did make him uncomfortable by not wearing one even though he didn’t say anything, so I pull it on now. 

I feel kind of special. If I’m right in assuming that Baz doesn’t talk about his problems openly a lot (I really think I’m right) then that means he just granted ,e with knowing something personal. Not that he spilled his heart out or anything, but when I told him he could talk if he wanted I had expected the statement to go completely disregarded. 

I’m glad it didn’t. 

“Anyway,” I say, “have you tried explaining to him how important dance is? Your father, I mean.”

He gives me a look like I’ve just said the stupidest thing imaginable. 

“And you think that would actually work?”

I shrug, feeling defensive. I jut my chin out. “Well if you don’t try how will you know.”

“You say it like it’s just the easiest thing in the world,” he says, making eye contact with me. I don’t break it and try to mimic the pointed facial expression he has plastered on. I think he expects me to relent and agree with him that everything is unfixable. For all I know it is, but to me it just seems like he’s giving up without trying. That doesn’t seem very Baz-like. 

He looks down and sighs. “My father and I, we don’t talk. About emotions. That’s not our thing.”

“Why don’t you make it your thing?”

He lets out a frustrated huff. I’m pushing him. I don’t think he’s used to people pushing him and not giving up when he makes an intimidating face. But this is good. He needs to be pushed. 

“It would take both of us to make that decision and I know he won’t.” I open my mouth to respond but he hold up his hand. “Stop. Before you say ‘Baz how do you know he won’t’ I just do. I was raised by him and I know.”

I hold his gaze for a moment longer than nod. “Alright, yeah. You know the situation and all better than I possibly could. Just, you know. Don’t quit just ‘cause he wants you to.”

Baz smirks. “Who do you take me for?”

“For real, though, you and Agatha’s dance stuff is pretty cool. Not a lot of people can do that.” He shrugs off the compliment but I see him sit up a bit straighter. I’m feeding his ego. 

“We’ve had a lot of training.”

“Bet you if I had even more training then you lot I’d still be hopeless at dance,” I say. Baz raises an eyebrow, looking interested and bored at the same time. It would be infuriating if I wasn’t still in a good mood. 

“Agatha hasn’t taught you any dance moves?” He’s mocking me but I’m going to pretend I didn’t notice. 

“She’s tried.”

“Well maybe she’s just not a good teacher,” he says, standing up and offering me a hand. I stare at it. 

“What are you doing?”

“Teaching you to dance, idiot.”

I shake my head vigorously. “No no no, that is not what we’re doing.” He’s smirking and it’s honestly really terrifying. 

“Yes it is.” When I don’t take the hand he offered me, he grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet. I stumble forward but he steadies me. I’m trying to brace myself for the colossal embarrassment that this is going to be. 

“We’re going to do a waltz because it’s slow and you’ll probably benefit later on in life from knowing if.” This is the one that Agatha tried to teach me. I’m bad at it. I’m bad at dance in general, but Baz doesn’t seem deterred yet. 

“Put your hands like this,” he’s guiding me so that my hand is on his bicep and his is on my back and the other two are clasped. “When i step forward with my left, you’re going to go back with your right, okay?” I nod, my eyes glued to our feet. “Then we’re going to go to the side. Got it?” His voice is more gentle than I’ve ever heard it. I nod again. “Just follow me.”

And we’re dancing I guess. Well he’s dancing, I’m stumbling. I’m concentrating on our feet, trying not to step on him. I hear him chuckling lightly and my face heats up. 

“Try look up,” he says.

“I’m going to step on you.”

“I won’t throw a fit if you do.”

I slowly lift my head. This isn't so bad. I’m not cocking it up completely. 

We’re a lot closer together then I had realized. 

I can see every detail of his face. How high the bridge of his nose is, how his eyes are the deepest gray imaginable, how he has absolutely no acne scars. 

I don’t know which one of us stopped dancing first but we’re not moving anymore. Not moving away. He’s so close. We’re just breathing, breathing the same air.

There’s a loud “ping” of a phone and I stumble backwards and Baz jolts away and now there’s space between us. I feel dizzy as I watch him pull his mobile out of his pocket. 

“I should go,” he says quickly, grabbing his bag. “Daphne is looking for me I need to go,” this might be the first time I’ve seen him stammer and I can’t fully take it in because I’m still light headed. “I,” he pauses at the door, looking at me. His face is fully flushed and I’ve forgotten how to speak, but it’s different from my normal forgetting how to speak. 

And then he’s gone and I’m sitting on my bed. 

I’m having a very major realization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is also where the amazing art that @peradoodle made comes into play. You can find that on her tumblr, my tumblr (@pressed-roses-and-tea-stains, the Carry On Big Bang tumblr (@carry-on-big-bang), or here https://carry-on-big-bang.tumblr.com/post/182813886688/shall-we-dance-author


	8. Chapter 8

Baz

Throughout my seventeen years of existence, there have been many moments that solidified my hatred for myself. There was the time I shouted at Mordelia for using my computer without asking. There was the time I playfully insulted my friend Niall one too many times and caused him to have a mini meltdown. There was the time I nearly yelled at a teacher for a reason that really doesn’t matter now. 

Everything I have done within the past day and a half has been under the pretense of distracting myself from how much of a colossal idiot I am. Despite my best efforts, a million errant thoughts have been pushing me back to the same thing. 

I would have kissed him. I was about to kiss him.

When my phone went off and the moment was broken, he looked so startled and uncomfortable and that was because of me. That was my fault. 

It is so impossibly stupid that I had thought he had been sending me any signals to imply that he would want that. He didn’t give me anything to even remotely display that he isn’t straight.

I’m at a social dance with Agatha and the other students (I’m not really close with any of them. I think most of them are scared of me, and I’m completely fine with that.) I want to be enjoying myself. If I could get myself to do that, it would be the perfect diversion. There’s a formation team doing a little show and while everyone is ooh-ing and aah-ing, I’m watching with unseeing eyes. 

Agatha hasn’t mentioned anything to do with Snow, so he must not have told her. Maybe he didn’t even realize what had happened. Almost happened. Leave it to Snow to be that thick. 

I don’t know which I’d prefer, him knowing I’m in love with him or continuing to not. At least the former would progress things. 

Agatha is off talking to some other people from our studio. I rarely ever interact with them unless she’s dragging me around. Today I’m content to be a wallflower. 

Simon

It’s about nine thirty. Agatha should be down any minute now, and Baz should be with her. 

I talked to Penny about what happened, because I talk to Penny about everything that happens. When we were twelve we made a pact, “no secrets.” I still stick by it for the most part. 

I think Baz was going to kiss me. I think he was about to kiss me. And - this is what I talked through with Penny - I think I wanted him to. 

So I might be gay. I am pretty sure I’m not. It’s just Baz, not anyone else. But I might be. I’ve decided not to think about it anymore. The past twenty four hours have been very enlightening. 

A lot makes sense when I look at it from this lens. Why every smooth thing he did would infuriate me. Why I got so unnecessarily worried that one day at the park when he went into shut down. Why waking up in the same bed as him was that embarrassing. 

According to Penny, Baz and I have been acting like a pair of kindergarteners that don’t know how to handle a crush. So maybe I’ve known for longer than I’ve known I knew. 

I keep glancing at the clock on my phone and trying not to feel antsy. There are people slowly trailing out of the club and walking down the stairs. Each time I see the doors open I expect it to be them. 

And then it is. 

Agatha waves at me from the top of the stairs and starts bounding down. Baz is slower behind her, moving languidly down the stairs. He somehow makes ordinary things look graceful. 

It’s a wonder that I didn’t figure this out sooner. Or maybe I’m just that dense. 

“Ready?” Agatha asks when she reaches me. I toss my keys to her. 

“I’ll meet you in the car, yeah? I gotta talk to Baz about something.” I feel my face flush annoyingly. 

Incidentally, I have not told Agatha about this all yet. It’s not that I think she’ll react poorly. Where Penny seemed mild intrigued, Agatha would be full on ecstatic. And that terrifies me just a tad. 

She raises her eyebrows and looks at me dubiously. “Okay…?” she says, starting to walk to the parking lot slowly. My face must give away that this is something important because she doesn’t ask. 

I turn around and Baz is there. If glares could kill, I would be dead at the scene. It doesn’t deter me though, actually the opposite. It’s reassuring. Him glaring at me is a normal kind of interaction for us. This is familiar turf. 

“You need to talk to me about something?” Baz says. He’s much more guarded than the last time I saw him. More like the version of him he let’s everyone see, not the loose one he was yesterday. 

“It’s about the other day.”

Baz

Snow has the most serious look on his face I’ve ever seen, and my stomach is on a loop of dropping, collecting itself, and dropping again. Here is where he tells me that he doesn’t want anything to do with me because of how uncomfortable I made him. I had been banking on him being the sort of gloss over it all and pretend that nothing had happened. That at least would leave me with something. It would have been painful, but it would have been something. 

I don’t want him to stop being a part of my life. I’m weak, and pathetic, and I don’t want the little bit I’ve got to end. I keep remind myself that I haven’t known him for that long, that I don’t know him that well. Reasoning is futile at this point. 

“Look,” I say, trying to give off the impression that I have a hold of myself and that him bringing this up hasn’t shattered my resolve, “about that, I really-“ 

I’m interrupted by Simon Snow kissing me. 

Simon

I pull back. Baz is looking at me, wide eyed and stunned. His cold persona has cracked and I’m starting to worry that I misinterpreted all of this. If, in actuality, Baz did not want to kiss me I probably have two seconds left to make a run for it before he murders me in cold blood. 

What feels like a century must be more like a couple of seconds before Baz grabs my shoulders and crashes into me. 

We’re in a very public place but that really doesn’t matter to me because we’ve managed to transcend the regular world and are now in a place where only this kiss exists. 

We break away again, both out of breath. 

“Is this really happening?” Baz whispers, his hands still grasping my shoulders. 

“God, I hope so,” I say back. Baz smiles and it’s bright and carefree and beautiful and I wish he’d do this at people more than he sneers but then I’m happy he doesn’t because that means this is special. This is for me. 

“I should go,” I say when what I would rather do is kiss him again and again. Minutes ago I knew that I wanted to but now I know exactly how much I want to. 

I go to step back and he seems reluctant to let go of me. 

“You’re not going to change your mind about this right?” he says just as I’m turning towards the parking lot. He looks genuinely worried. “This isn’t some impulse? You really mean,” he gestures at his lips, “all of that?”

I don’t answer. Instead I close the space between us again.

Baz

My world has been flipped on its axis and for the first time that’s a good thing. I can’t believe that this is my life. 

Simon Snow kissed me and I kissed Simon Snow. 

I haven’t talked to anyone about it. Not yet. It’s like I want to keep it where it is. Just with Snow and I. I want it to stay special. 

Daphne commented on me seeming particularly chipper. I feel particularly chipper. It’s strange. 

I also haven’t seen Snow since that night outside the club ballroom. I’ve seen Agatha and she hasn’t mentioned anything or given me any obnoxiously knowing looks, so it would seem he hasn’t told anyone either. 

I suppose I should probably talk through all of this with the man in question. 

I’ve decided I’m not going to overthink it. I’m just going to let myself be happy. Despite it going against all my best instincts I’m going to try. 

-  
Thus far, we’ve had three video filming days for Bunce’s exploitation project (I don’t actually think it’s exploitation.) (I just enjoy being an asshole.) The second two were monumentally better than the first, due to my subtle insisting to be present for the location picking. The first encounter has also not been brought up in length, and I’m quite content to keep it that way. 

We’re going for a fourth video today. Rumba, at another park because Snow likes to play with any and all friendly dogs while we do our thing. 

I looked it up, and we technically need a permit to do all of this. Otherwise it is slightly illegal. I mentioned this to Bunce, but she was unaffected. “We shouldn’t be bothered by the law if it’s art, Basil,” she had said. “Just don’t mention it to Agatha, she’ll freak.”

The last thing I want to do is get ahead of myself, but I feel. I don’t know. Giddy. Light. It would be embarrassing if wasn’t so happy about it. Or maybe that should make it more embarrassing.

Well I won’t count it that way so long as I’m the only one that knows. The mortals can’t know that I’m so affected by lowly emotions as such. And even though I’m seeing the creator of all these disgustingly fluffy feeling shortly, no one but me is going to be aware as long as I can help it. 

I’m at the park before the other three. It’s peaceful out, barely anyone but me is here. I’ve been sitting at a bench eying the angry looking grey clouds for ten minutes or so. It’s going to rain and it’ll be brilliant amusement to watch Bunce scramble to prevent the cameras from getting water damage. From what I can remember, these cameras don’t even belong to her. 

Listening to music, I’m zoning out when I’m jolted back down to earth by someone jumping at me from behind. 

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I shout, on my feet and whirling around to see Snow cackling. The other two are trailing behind him, arms overflowing with the equipment he is normally in charge of. I fix him with a glare. “Snow,” I say in acknowledgment. 

I don’t know how this is supposed to go. Some might find it shocking, but I’ve never been in a relationship before. Is this even a relationship yet? Christ, I should find that out. 

“Basilton,” he says in a fake posh voice, what I assume must be an impression of me. Cheeky bastard. I’m about to retort when one out of the other two catch up. Agatha has her brow furrowed, gaze turned skyward. 

“You think it’ll rain while we’re here?” she says. 

“Fuck, I hope not,” Snow says with more conviction than most people would have towards the weather. I give him a questioning look. He just shrugs and gestures at his white shirt. “This’d definitely go see through.”

I decide to be bold and do something that, under other circumstances, I wouldn’t even think twice about doing. I wink at him. 

What I’m rewarded with is better than anything I’ve ever experienced. Snow flushes a beat red and tries to sputter out a response, effectively speaking in gibberish. Wellbelove, who missed my provocation, looks at him like he’s gone mental. 

If being whatever this is with Snow means that from now on I can do small flirtations actions that send him reeling, I am so much more than content. 

Bunch finally joins us and is glaring at the sky. “Let’s do this quick so we don’t get dumped on.” 

So we do. 

Agatha stumbles a bit on our ending. Nothing noticeable to the outside eye, but you become hyper sensitive of the other person when you’re dancing. 

“Alright?” I ask as Snow and Bunce are applauding obnoxiously loud. She waves me off. 

“Yeah, just got a twinge. Was probably my arch or something.” She’s rolling her foot. “I haven’t had time to stretch nearly as much as I should this past week.”

Bunce is already urging Snow from where he is laying across a bench to help her pack the cameras. I can feel the prickling of raindrops on my skin, the weather standing by it’s word. They clean up fast, both Agatha and Penelope dashing the cameras to the safety of the car. Which leaves Snow and I, alone in the steadily increasing rain that is in fact turning his shirt see through. It’s all horribly cliche. 

“So,” he says over the sound of the rain hitting the ground. I pull the jumper I’m wearing tightly around myself to prevent shivering. 

I still have the one Snow lent me. It’s not the one I’m wearing now, but I still have it. In my car. Untouched since the day he tossed it to me because it felt invasive to wear it afterwards. Even more so to smell it. 

“So,” I say back. I’m side-eying his face to try and read his expression as he squints through the rain. There are droplets caught on his eyelashes. 

“The other day,” he turns his head and catches my eye. “I didn’t tell Agatha or Penny yet. Didn’t wanna jinx it.” I feel myself smiling despite myself. 

“You wouldn’t have,” I say quietly. I’m not sure he heard me, but he stops walking and turns to face me. By now we’re both soaked, head to toe. His curls are matted across his forehead, his shirt clinging to his frame. 

“Well,” he says, looking shy all of a sudden. “I’m not going to be good at this.”

“Good at what?”

He bites his lower lip. “This,” he gestures between the two of us. “This whole thing. But, if you give me a chance, I’d like to try.”

I pull him forward by his shirt and kiss him softly because we’re here, standing in the middle of a park in the pouring rain, and he wants me to give him a chance. 

Our lips separate, but we’re only inches apart. Snow laughs lightly. 

“So is that a yes?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” I say, my voice barely audible. “Of course it is.”


	9. Chapter 9

Simon

I got Baz’s number off of Penny. You would think, given the circumstances, that I would have the privilege of getting it from the source. But it’s Baz, and this is very in character. 

We still haven’t exactly talked to anyone about all of this yet. Nor have we talked about when we are gonna do that. It’s a wonder I haven’t let it slip at some point these last few days. I still feel buzzed from it all. It’s been all I can think about. 

I’m dating Baz. Even though we haven’t gone on any actual dates yet, I still get to call it that. I have a dancer boyfriend that acts like a prick twenty-four seven and I might not know everything about him yet, but I get to find out. 

So, yeah, it’s been interesting not telling everyone I know. 

It’s another competition day, the normal drill. It’s a small one, I think, but they’re treating it like prep for the big one next week, the one that Agatha has been nervous for. She won’t listen to me when I tell her she’s got nothing to be nervous about. Gets all indignant and huffy. I’ve since learned to pick my battles when it comes to the motivational speeches. 

Agatha is in the bathroom getting ready and, as per usual, I am staying out of her way. Helen baked scones this morning and I’ve already inhaled three. I’m on my fourth as I sneak into Agatha’s room to get the hoodie I left in there the night before. I find it on her desk chair under a million different articles of clothing. It looks like she went berserk and tore everything out of a drawer in a search for something. The usual competition morning panic. 

Just as I’m about to retreat back to the safety zone of my room, something on her desk catches my eye. I finish off the scone before looking closer. 

It’s an envelope addressed to me. It’s wrinkled like it had been crumpled into a ball. There’s a small date scrawled in the corner, telling me it was sent about a month ago. The return address in the top hand corner makes my stomach lurch. 

Dad.

I grasp the envelope in my hand. Whatever letter had accompanied it isn’t there. 

“Simon, it’s time to-“ Agatha has stopped in the doorway. Her eyes have gone wide and she’s staring at me. 

“What is this?” I say. When I opened my mouth, I expected myself to shout. Instead my words come out low. They sound like a threat. Agatha’s eyes get wider still. There’s something in her expression. She looks guilty.

“Simon, I can explain-“

“What the fuck is this?” This time I do shout. Agatha steps closer to me and tries to grab the envelope from me. I wrench it away. “My father sent me a letter and you opened it and didn’t give it to me?”

There is a hot anger coursing through me. Everything around me feels like it’s blurring, my cells feel like they are starting to smoke. 

“Simon, please-“

“And, what, you didn’t think to tell me? Let me know that I have actual living relatives that are trying to contact me? Did it even cross your mind that I might want to know that?” 

Her face shifts into something I can’t place or think to try to place. I can’t think. 

“What do you mean ‘living relatives’?” she says, less timid than a moment ago. 

“For fuck’s sake, my father sent me a letter and you didn’t show me and until now I assumed he was either dead or a dead beat-“

“Do you not remember any of it?” she cuts me off, matching my volume. That stops me, clears the mist a little bit. But not enough.

“Any of what?” My voice is back to the growl it had been earlier. I can feel my body shaking. 

“When we were five and you came to school every day with bruises on your wrists and neck looking like you were half starved?” She sounds near hysterics and I’m right behind her. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Jesus Christ, Simon!” she shrieks. Tears are streaming down her face, leaving tracks through her makeup. “Yes I stole your letters os that you wouldn’t have to read the threats that this man illegally sends to you every month! Is that so fucking wrong?”

I can’t see Agatha anymore. My vision has been taken over by a red, hot haze and I can’t choke it down. 

“I’ve been getting letters from my father every month and you’ve been keeping them from me?”

“Are you not listening to me? This man is insane and-“

“Who else knows?” I ask, my volume beginning to climb again. “Is it just you? Did you just decide of your own accord that you were going to meddle in this?” 

“Penny knows too,” she says quietly. That lights a match that sets the gasoline in my blood on fire. 

“You have no right!” I holler. “The both of you have no right to keep something like this from me!” 

My words ring in the air between us. 

“We need to leave,” Agatha whispers, her voice hoarse. “For the competition. Are you ready?”

My face goes slack. “I’m not going.” 

“What? But you always-“

“I’m not going,” I repeat, this time stronger. 

I’ve slammed the door to my room and collapsed on my bed when my vision begins to clear and images start to flood my head. 

Penny

I don’t normally go to Agatha’s competitions, but Simon talked me into coming to keep him company this time. Only Simon isn’t here. 

“What do you mean?” I probe Agatha when she says he couldn’t make it. “He’s always-“

“He’s sick,” she says sharply. There’s a rasp at the edge of her voice. Like she’s been shouting. Her eyes look red rimmed and her eyeliner is a bit more smudgy than her normal look. Baz is studying her face with the most concerned look I’ve ever seen him give. 

Something happened with Simon and her, but I’m not so socially inept to ask anymore right now. 

I’m here to watch them dance - to be a supportive friend - so that’s what I’ll do. Even though the air feels stale without their usual cheerleader. 

I know fuck all about dance, but Baz and Agatha don’t look the way they always do when they dance. They’re on the floor and I’m sure they’re doing the steps all correct, but something is missing. I can’t place it. 

I have my eyes trained on them and I see it all happen. 

Another dance couple accidentally nudges into Agatha. 

She buckles over. 

She clings to Baz’s arm as they try to right themselves

Some decision is made and Baz slowly guides a limping Agatha off the dance floor. 

I know fuck all about dance, but even I can see that this can’t be good. 

Simon

In elementary school, there were these parent-teacher meeting days. They always happened at the end of a big section, before Christmas or summer. We’d have the meetings and then the next day we’d have a party. My kindergarten teacher, Ms. , I liked her. I was on elf her favorites, she would always smile at me.

I thought that meant I had done well in school. I told my dad I was doing well in school. My dad. We sat across from her during the meeting, and she told him I was struggling in almost everything, everything except drawing. She told him I made lovely doodles on all of my papers. She was smiling. My dad turned to stone. 

I remember that’s when it started. I remember not talking and being hit and not talking. I remember going to Agatha’s and Mrs. Wellbelove pulling me to her for a hug and me flinching. I remember a sleek car showing up one day and my dad shouting. I remember that’s when it stopped. 

There’s a bookshelf in the corner of my room. On there is a framed picture of me, Penny, and Agatha from first grade. We’re smiling, and the wine collared bruise across my left cheek is stretched out. I never questioned it before. I never even thought about it. I never thought to think about it. 

I lurch out of my room, into the bathroom across the hall and heave in the toilet. My head is spinning. 

My dad. 

He’s been sending me letters for who knows how long. The man that I thought was just an image that would chase me in my dreams has been trying to contact me. There’s panic and anger and fear running through me. I let myself fall back onto the bathroom floor, the cool tile feels soothing on my overheating back. 

I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. 

Baz

The too bright lights of the hospital cast a million shadows along the floor and my mind in a million directions. 

Part of me is on the dance floor. Part of me is feeling Agatha list forward from the collision. Part of me is not succeeding at steadying her and hearing something snap as she buckles over. 

Another part of me is five years old. 

I’m in this same hospital, in a different ward, sitting next to my aunt whose face is over exposed and washed out by the light. She isn’t crying. My father is. 

Bunce and Daphne went to get us coffee from the hospital cafeteria. The Wellbelove’s are with their daughter, through one of those doors. I am having my senses dulled and sharpened and dulled and sharpened by the overhead fluorescents. 

I think maybe I’m overreacting. She might not actually be hurt that bad, and if she is it doesn’t have to turn the earth upside down. But some switch has been flipped in my head and this feels like the end of the world. I want to not be out here alone and I want someone to tell me if Agatha is alright and I want to know where the fuck Snow is. I want to know why the one time something bad happens he wasn’t there. 

There’s a bang of someone forcefully opening a door. I look up. It’s like I summoned him or something because there is Simon Snow breathing heavily through is mouth. I know the sight of him should make me feel relieved, should bring some kind of solace but it doesn’t. All looking at him makes me feel right now is anger. 

He walks over to me and there’s something tense about his stature. Like a tinker toy that’s been wound up but no one’s letting it go. 

“Where the fuck were you?” I say once he’s in front of me. I mean to say it harsh, with conviction but it just comes out tired. Snow tenses more, crossing his arms and holding them tightly. 

“Is Agatha okay?” he says. It doesn’t sound like he’s here. He’s in his head somewhere and that makes this ugly feeling worse. 

I’m not angry at him. But I’m angry, and he’s here, and he wasn’t here before. 

“She most likely broke something in her leg.” My voice is almost at a shout. I shoot a glance at the front desk lady on the other side of the glass window. She’s eyeing us suspiciously. I drag my voice back down to a normal tone. “Where the fuck were you?”

“I’m here now, okay? i had something going on it’s not like I knew she was going to get hurt!” Snow, however, does not regulate his volume. 

“Of all the times for you to cock up,” I hiss, “and you-“

My words are cut short by Snow’s fist connecting with my nose. 

“Hey!” The door slams open again and Penny is there along with the woman from the desk. I’ve stumbled back, too stunned to do anything. My hand is at my nose. It’s not broken, I don’t think. But my lip has busted open. My anger from a moment ago has evaporated. Simon is still breathing heavily, fists clenched at his sides and eyes blown out. But he doesn’t look as wound up anymore. 

Penny rushes over and grabs Simon’s arm, pulling him towards the door. 

“I’ve got it under control,” she says to the desk lady who is still hovering. “Sorry about that.” She pulls Simon the rest of the way through the door. 

Simon

My head has gone back to spinning. I’m going to overdose on this shaky adrenaline that today keeps forcing down my throat. 

Penny is dragging me into the courtyard out the hospital entrance. I jerk my arm away from her with more aggression than I probably need. I’m only half here and yet I still manage to hurt everyone around me. She turns to me, her face knit with confusion and concern. She looks like she wants to reach out and touch me but she doesn’t. 

“Simon,” she says. Her voice is strong, she doesn’t waver. “What is going on?”

“My father has been sending me letters. I have a father and I remember him but I didn’t remember him before.” I don’t know why I say it like that. Like I need to spell it out to make it sensible. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been able to wrap my head around any of this. I doubt I ever will. How does someone forget something like that? That’s big, being taken away from an abusive parent. That’s something that sticks with you isn’t it?

Penny’s face barely shifts, except for her jaw. That clenches. She’s studying my face hard. 

“You remember?” She says slowly. “All of it?”

“How long has he been sending me letters?” I say instead of answering her question. I might not remember all of it. I might be blocking out loads more. 

“Since we started high school,” her voice is still strong and stern. “A little bit after Agatha’s parents became your guardians.” 

I thought I would get angry again. I thought getting her to admit to being part of this would fuel me enough to crush the world around us until there is just enough space for me to sink into. 

Instead I slump forward and let my chest cave in on itself. I let myself shake and shudder. Penelope envelops me and I let her. I let everything happen. 

“Why?” I choke out once I can. She’s guided me so that we’re sitting on one of the plastic and metal benches. She’s regarding me with her concerned face again. 

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you and Agatha decide this for me?”

“I don’t know, Simon,” her voice is just barely a whisper. “It seemed like the only option. You seemed so happy and unaffected. Like nothing bad had ever happened to you. Agatha didn’t want to tell her parents because she thought they might reach out to him and I knew that if we told you you’d try to find him.” 

Her eyes go wide as she hears the she just said. “Please don’t,” she grips both of my shoulders tightly, turning so that she’s facing me. “Simon, promise me you won’t try to find him. He doesn’t deserve that, it won’t-“

“I’m not going to,” I cut her off. “I don’t want to.”

She hugs me then. Wraps me tightly in her arms. 

“I wish I hadn’t remembered,” I whisper. 

“Simon,” she says, breaking away and meeting my eyes. “Maybe it’s time to get you help.”

Baz

I’m staring out the library window. Initially I was playing, but my bow arm is limp at my side now. 

Daphne drove me home not long after the incident with Snow. They didn’t need me there and I think she could tell how burnt out I was. My nose is still throbbing slightly. 

Agatha has a broken ankle. The right one. She texted me after getting the x-rays. I like to think that fi I wasn’t so fried I would be there comforting her. But I don’t know if I would be able to do that affectively. 

You can’t dance on a broken ankle. I would not blame her for being inconsolable right now. I doubt she wants to have yet another person telling her that it will heal. Healing takes time and not dancing during that time is going to make it feel like an eternity. 

Over dramatic, yes, but true. 

And then there’s Snow. As always. I want to call him or something, see if he is alright, but considering how we last parted ways I’m not so sure that would be welcome. 

There’s a loud rap on the door. 

“Enter,” I say, still looking out the window. 

“Basil.” My father. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he is the person I want least to see right now, but I certainly do not want to talk to him. 

“Father.” I’m not going to look at him until I have to. 

“I’ve been talking to your mother-“

“I would hope so, seeing she’s your wife.” He’s silent for a moment. I break and turn around, putting the violin gently on a corner table. I lock eyes with him, standing there in one of his suits even though it’s a weekend and no one wears suits when they’re just sitting around at home. 

“Basil, I don’t want this to be another argument.” he does not drop his gaze. he won’t until I do, I know because it’s a power trick I picked up from him. 

“If Daphne told you to come here and comfort me somehow, you can save your breath. I’m fine.” I glance down at that last bit, letting him get the best of me. I hear him sigh in resignation. Maybe that’ll actually be enough and he’ll leave me to my pitiful moping.

“I suppose it isn’t really my place to contradict that.” That catches me off guard, his words and his tone. Gentle. Weakened. Things my father lives to make clear are not him. I look up at him again. “But I’m still going to say my piece,” he says with finality, walking towards me and into my space. 

“Basilton, I am so proud of you.”

“What?” I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. His words throw me off balance. My face must be something because he chuckles lightly. 

“Is it really that odd to her me say it?”

I stop gaping at him and recollect myself. I still have the niggled suspicion that someone is making him talk to me, but I don’t push it. For once, I don’t last out. I just hold eye contact. 

“I’ve been pretty rotten at showing it, haven’t I?” He searches my face for a moment and then it’s his turn to glance down. “I,” he stops and takes a breath. “I’m sorry.”

It feels so good to hear him say this.

“Your mother,” his voice breaks. I see now that he’s crying and I know he’s not talking about Daphne. “Your mother would be proud of you too.”

Simon

I’m back in the hospital as Agatha’s parents are filling out paperwork and Agatha herself is curled up in a wheelchair, her foot in a bulky cast. Penny had to leave but made me promise to call her once I get home. Told me we’ll figure out what to do next then. 

As drained as I am, I already know what to do next. 

“Hey,” I say softly, coming up to stand next to the chair. Agatha starts and looks up at me. Her eyes are puffy and the makeup she meticulously put on this morning is streaked down her cheeks. “I-”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, cutting me off. Her voice is rough. 

“No. I’m the one that should be sorry. I fucked up.”

“So did I,” she says quickly. “I shouldn’t have kept any of that from you and I-” her voice gets caught. She looks away from me and at her cast. 

“Maybe we both fucked up. And maybe that’s okay.” I place my hand on her shoulder. It’s an apology and a peace offering and an I love you. I think she gets it. 

We fall into a silence and it’s good. If something needs to be said later, we’ll say it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn't let it all be cute and happy, now could I?


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, this is it!
> 
> Thank you everyone who supported this as it was coming out and left me all those lovely comments! I hope you all enjoy the last little bit of Shall We Dance?

Baz

“Physical therapy is really just becoming a bore at this point. I’m practically all better I just want to be done with it already.” Agatha is sprawled out on one of the hideously antique sofas in my sitting room, her head on my lap. She’s flipping through videos of her new favorite latin dance couple on her phone. In the past few months it’s like all physical boundaries have gone away completely. Despite dancing together, this type of scene never really used to happen. I believe it is because she now knows how gay I am and I haven’t yet bothered to explain to her that that’s a tad problematic. 

“You could just stop going,” Bunce says, “if you really don’t need it anymore.” I fix her with a glare. 

“I thought you were the smart and responsible one in your little trio.”

“No, that’s Simon obviously.” He’s sitting next to her on another hideously antique sofa and she nudges him. He blinks out of his zone out and smiles. 

“Yeah, totaly. Mr. Responsible here.”

He’s been doing that a lot. Zoning out. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, though. The full extent of what happened on that competition day was never really explained to me, and that’s fine. It’s one of those things that the three of them have to keep to themselves and clean up a bit. 

Snow had expected me to be angry at him for punching me. He called me the next day and for a few minutes I couldn’t get a word in around his badly formulated apologies. I had actually expected myself to be angry as well, but I didn’t have it in me. I’ve grown very weak for this boy. 

We talked through bits of it. Not all of it, but bits. Why he wasn't at the comp. Why Agatha injuring herself freaked me out so much. 

The injury itself didn’t end up being as catastrophic as Agatha and I thought it would. Physical therapy and a few months break from lessons. I’ve kept up practicing at home just to stop any rust from forming. As of now, Agatha can handle light training.

We’re on track. 

Simon

I feel so weirdly at peace sitting in this terrifying, gothic mansion with these three people. 

The past couple of months have been rough. I’m seeing a therapist now. Every Tuesday. My memories - that’s what we’ve really been working on - they’re not all there yet. It’s like there’s a film other everything before a certain point and even though I know I need to try to break it I don’t always want to. But it’s helping I guess. And I haven’t had a bad panic attack in a couple of weeks, almost a month now. Penny’s good at handling me when I’m in a fit. Baz, though, I think it freaks him out because he doesn’t know how to help. 

Baz. That’s a thing. A good thing. 

Penny wasn’t shocked at all when I told her. She gave me one of her signature looks and said “Anyone would have spotted it from a mile away, Simon. He’s been all you talk about for the past month.” Agatha was enthusiastic. Really enthusiastic. 

I look at Baz now, catch his eye and smile. He makes a show of rolling his eyes at me. But he smiles back.


End file.
